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Actor and performance artist Shia LaBeouf kicked off his planned protest of President Donald Trump this week by enthusiastically participating in the museum exhibit in New York City that he helped to create. [On Tuesday, the Transformers star was spotted at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, where over the weekend he unveiled his latest performance art project, an exhibit titled, “He Will Not Divide Us. ” Consisting of a bare white wall with a camera pointed out towards visitors and the phrase “He Will Not Divide Us” printed above it, attendees are encouraged to stand in front of the camera and look into it while repeating the phrase. The camera is connected to a that will be active for Trump’s entire first term in office. Since going online over the weekend, LaBeouf has shown up periodically to chant along with other demonstrators. Shia getting really into saying #HeWillNotDivideUs and slapping the camera pic. twitter. — #HeWillNotDivideUs (@HWNDUS) January 23, 2017, On Sunday, the actor became combative with a visitor who was attempting to speak into the camera. The Twitter account for the exhibit said the man was a “white supremacist. ” White supremacist yells into the camera and Shia LaBeouf shuts him down. This has been a very interesting live stream. #HeWillNotDivideUs pic. twitter. — #HeWillNotDivideUs (@HWNDUS) January 23, 2017, According to TMZ, the New York Police Department will maintain a presence at the site to ensure crowd control for as long as necessary. At times, dozens of people have shown up all at once at the exhibit to dance, sing and chant into the camera. LaBeouf collaborated on the project with his frequent performance art partners Nastja Sade Ronkko and Luke Turner, who also worked with the actor on his #TouchMySoul, #FollowMyHeart and #AllMyMovies projects. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
On Thursday Oct. 27, 2016, a Bloomberg Businessweek report was published with the aid of an anonymous, accredited source from Donald Trump’s campaign. This informant announced a three-part voter suppression plan to intimidate Americans to win the election. The GOP presidential nominee felt Hillary Clinton could not win with out the votes of African-Americans, radical white liberals, or women. According to a recent poll, on Wednesday Nov. 2, Clinton was leading Trump by either a little or a lot in most states.
The report in BusinessWeek was initiated by several weeks of a Trump tirade inquiring about the honesty of the U.S. election process. Ranting that the system was rigged against him.
An official source inside the Trump campaign, announced there were three large-scale voter suppression plans. Each was aimed at one of three select groups. They believed Clinton could not win without support from these groups.
Voter intimidation is used to describe an action or actions taken by a person or group, directed at eligible voters to keep them from voting. This is usually done by putting up signs with false dates or passing out phony fliers to mislead citizens.
However, the BusinessWeek article described a plan that was designed to discourage people from casting their ballot for Clinton. The Trump campaign planned on reminding black voters of a comment made by the Democratic presidential nominee, in 1994, while Bill Clinton was promoting a crime bill for the metropolitan areas. It was then, she referred to certain African-Americans as “Superpreditors.”
Trump repetedly asked his supporters to go out with everyone they know, and watch the voting booths for signs of it being rigged against him. This begs two questions; Was this to intimidate Clinton Voters? and Was it legal to watch people so closely attempting to do their patriotic duty?
When Trump told everyone at a rally, in Pennsylvania, he could not lose because of “you know what I mean,” he stepped onto an awkward line that leaned dangerously toward illegal. According to an expert on election law, Rick Hansen, having a group of people organized at polling stations, watching people, and causing them to feel distressed could cross that line into illegal voter intimidation.
A good example of this would be Roger Stone, who is Trump’s former advisor, who planned to have over a thousand volunteers, in several major cities in swing states that usually vote Democrat, set up monitoring stations at polling booths. How the volunteers watched people would determine if their voter intimidation tactics were illegal.
There are four federal laws, along with each state’s individual laws, on voter intimidation. The federal rules are as follows; no one is allowed to make any abusive remarks at the balloters, or have any direct confrontation with them, there cannot be any raising of voices or casting insults at people entering the station to do their civic duty. These laws are the line a Republican clerk once crossed and was suspended from duty for this violation. Intimidating people to influence the outcome of an event or situation can easily backfire and end with severe consequences.
By Katherine Miller
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
The NY Times : Donald Trump campaign seeks ‘voter suppression’ sources says, but it’s legal
CNN : Donald Trump spokesman denies voter suppression claim
Time.com : Why Donald Trump Ballot Watchers ‘Might Be’ Illegal
Top and Feature Image Courtesy of Stephan Melkisethian’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License vote | 0 |
Every year, about 30 Americans die in avalanches, with an additional 110 deaths in Canada and Europe. Skiers and snowmobilers account for the vast majority of these deaths. Jordy Hendrikx has lost friends and a student to such disasters. An earth sciences professor and director of the Snow and Avalanche Laboratory at Montana State University, Dr. Hendrikx studied the geophysics of snow for a decade before he decided that, to prevent avalanche accidents, human behavior in the backcountry needed to be better understood. Scientists and avalanche forecasters have a good grasp on how weather and terrain contribute to avalanches. Research suggests that statistical avalanche forecasts have about an 80 percent accuracy rate, and forecasts made with expert judgment tend to be even more accurate. But human activity is a huge — and unpredictable — factor in avalanches. “Avalanches aren’t just acts of God,” Dr. Hendrikx said. “About 90 percent of avalanche victims trigger the avalanche themselves. ” These accidents are rarely a result of ignorance. People traveling in the backcountry usually understand avalanche forecasts and know how to read the terrain. What they are unaware of, Dr. Hendrikx believes, “is how they make decisions in a group, under different settings and different pressures. ” To untangle these processes, Dr. Hendrikx teamed up with Jerry Johnson, a professor of political science at Montana State University, to start their Tracks Project in 2013. The project relies on backcountry skiers and snowmobilers who record their slope movements and answer survey questions using their smartphones. The researchers have collected reports from more than 800 people around the world. Among their preliminary findings, some are intuitive. Older people, especially those with children, make more conservative decisions. Young, groups take more risks. Those firmly set on a goal, like conquering a new slope, make riskier choices. Other findings are more surprising. Though going out alone in the backcountry tends to be seen as risky, project respondents who were solo travelers tended to make safer choices than those who traveled in larger groups. Some evidence suggests larger groups make riskier decisions. Part of that may be peer pressure or a desire to show off. Part of it may be the expert halo, which causes people to blindly defer to the perceived authority in the group instead of communicating about perceived dangers. Faced with the same avalanche conditions, experts chose steeper terrain, where avalanches are more likely to be triggered, than others. The Tracks Project follows work from an avalanche researcher named Ian McCammon, who, in the early 2000s, analyzed 715 recreational avalanche fatalities in the United States across three decades. Among other findings, he suggested that skiers took more risks when they were familiar with a route or when competing for “first tracks” on fresh powder. Unlike Dr. McCammon, Dr. Johnson explained, “we’re also looking at the good side of the story, which is that 99 percent of people are using the terrain appropriately. ” Though the number of people engaging in backcountry sports has surged in the last decade, the accident rate has remained steady. From survey responses, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Hendrikx have found that groups that preplanned routes and made communication a priority made better decisions. People who dug pits to assess snow characteristics or looked for recent avalanche activity before going down a slope sometimes changed routes to avoid danger. The researchers hope their findings can help improve avalanche education. They also believe their research can help others who traverse tricky terrain in their work, such as wildland firefighters and military personnel. These wider implications drive Dr. Hendrikx. “At some point, I realized I could spend the next 10 years looking at the minute details of how snow surface crystals form, and maybe save one or two lives,” he said. “But really understanding the matrix, and how group dynamics affect it — I felt this is where I could make the biggest impact, and ultimately, save more lives. ” | 1 |
For a brief moment, after a white supremacist carried out a massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston, S. C. it seemed as though the Confederate battle flag, that most divisive of symbols, might soon be on its way out of the American political arena. But now that explosive and complicated vestige of the Old South is back, in a new — and, to some Americans, newly disturbing — context. During Donald J. Trump’s campaign, followers drawn to his rallies occasionally displayed the flag and other Confederate iconography. Since the election, his supporters and others have displayed the flag as a kind of rejoinder to protesters in places such as Durango, Colo. St. Petersburg, Fla. Hampton, Va. Fort Worth and Traverse City, Mich. On Election Day in Silverton, Ore. the flag appeared at a high school Trump rally, where students reportedly told Hispanic classmates, “Pack your bags you’re leaving tomorrow. ” The day after, at Kenyon College in Ohio, the college’s president, Sean M. Decatur, spoke to a worried campus, describing his discomfort at seeing Confederate flags on display in the nearby city of Mount Vernon. Dorothy Robinson, 37, said that seeing the battle flag flying at a traditional postelection unity parade in her hometown, Georgetown, Del. felt “like someone had punched me in the gut. ” Those who have publicly embraced the flag are a small minority of the more than 60 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump in the Nov. 8 election. But these incidents, and hundreds of reports of insults and threats directed at minorities and others, are forcing Americans to confront vexing questions about the future of race relations under Mr. Trump and the extent to which his campaign has animated white resentment and even a budding white nationalism. The emergence of the flag in a postelection context also comes as liberals and others have harshly criticized Mr. Trump for appointing as his chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, a website they accuse of trafficking in misogynist and ideas. Shortly after the June 17, 2015, Charleston massacre, an article posted on Breitbart argued that the Confederacy was “a patriotic and idealistic cause,” and that its flag “proclaims a glorious heritage. ” “Every tree, every rooftop, every picket fence, every telegraph pole in the South should be festooned with the Confederate battle flag,” the author, Gerald Warner, wrote. “Hoist it high and fly it with pride. ” How much the flag’s resurgence reflects anything more than the sentiments of those who fly it remains unclear. Mr. Trump, a native New Yorker, declared shortly after announcing his candidacy that he supported a call by Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina to remove the flag from the grounds of the Statehouse there after the mass shooting in Charleston. The State Legislature, after passionate debate, eventually agreed to remove the flag. “I think they should put it in the museum, let it go, respect whatever it is that you have to respect, because it was a point in time, and put it in a museum,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the time. Historians say the battle flag has had shifting meanings over time: a symbol of white resistance to integration during the Civil Rights era, a more complicated but still racially charged symbol now. Grace Elizabeth Hale, a professor of American studies and history at the University of Virginia who has written extensively about the South, segregation and white Americans, said the flag had long been a symbol for outsiders and a rebuke to the forces of decorum and political correctness. She said its use now, both in the South and outside it, could be seen as an expression of concern that white culture “has been displaced as the norm. ” “Maybe for the first time ever, definitely in my lifetime, people outside the South are, in a very public way, claiming a white racial identity,” she said. Stephen Moss, a Republican state representative from the small town of Blacksburg, S. C. was one of a number of lawmakers who voted against removing the flag from the Statehouse grounds in July 2015. To Mr. Moss, a supporter of Mr. Trump, the flag represents the heritage of those who fought for the Confederacy. But he acknowledged that the flag had also been “hijacked by hate groups. ” Asked why the flag was turning up in the hands of Trump supporters, he said he thought that it might be part of a backlash of working white voters who suspect that people — in their minds, often minorities — are taking advantage of the federal welfare system. “A lot of these people who go to work every day are in the line at the grocery store, and over half the people are bringing out these cards” to pay for the groceries, he said. Two days after the presidential race concluded, Ms. Robinson, a writer and editor who lives in Maplewood, N. J. was back in her hometown to watch the Return Day parade, a tradition in which winners and losers of local elections ride through town together in a show of unity, and party leaders come together to bury an actual hatchet. There were marching bands and smiling faces, and Ms. Robinson felt that perhaps the country was on its way to healing after a particularly ugly election. Then a white Chevrolet pickup rolled by, flying an American flag, a Trump flag and the battle flag. Ms. Robinson, a white Hillary Clinton supporter, was standing next to a black friend at the time. “I wasn’t shocked I was horrified,” Ms. Robinson said. She suspects that some white Trump supporters are indulging in new freedom to be politically incorrect now that the nation’s first president is on the way out. Mr. Trump declared his candidacy on June 16, 2015, the day before the Charleston massacre. He would go on to see his political stock rise at the same time as backlash was emerging, particularly among people who felt their heritage as white Southerners was under attack. Across the country, flag supporters staged more than 350 rallies after the Charleston shooting. During the campaign, the activist and filmmaker Rod Webber documented the sale of Confederate flags with “Trump 2016” emblazoned on them outside a Trump rally in Pittsburgh. He said that he saw the flags for sale outside about 10 other campaign rallies. In August, inside a rally in Kissimmee, Fla. a Trump supporter named Brandon Partin draped such a flag over a railing, although a campaign staff member and the local police eventually had it removed. Afterward, Mr. Partin told CNN that he was not a racist or a white supremacist, and he argued that the flag was about the Civil War, which he said “wasn’t about racism at all,” because blacks fought in both Northern and Southern armies. Mr. Partin said that he thought Mr. Trump would be fine with the display of the flag. “Because he understands the history,” he said. Since Election Day, anecdotal accounts of discrimination targeting racial and religious minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have overrun news reports and social media. National organizations have begun tracking the reports, seeking to verify their veracity and identify trends. The Southern Poverty Law Center has received more than 430 reports, the majority of them for behavior, followed by episodes. Many of the events have occurred on elementary, middle and high school campuses. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that many of the episodes, which range from offensive vandalism to physical violence, have invoked Mr. Trump and his campaign slogans. The center has also collected some reports of Trump supporters being harassed by opponents. In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, Mr. Trump turned directly to the camera and addressed those who would commit hateful acts. “I will say right to the cameras: Stop it,” he said. Though Mr. Trump called for the removal of the flag from the South Carolina Statehouse, the flag has ardent supporters among prominent members of the the group of conservatives that the League has called “a group of white nationalists and unabashed and racists. ” Some extol the flag as a symbol of white resistance. Others describe something broader. “Love the confederate flag! Has become the universal symbol of defiance,” Paul Ray Ramsey, a Trump supporter and popular internet personality who goes by Ramzpaul, wrote in January when he shared on Twitter a photograph of Hungarian nationalists with the flag. Still, the flag’s new context can seem almost baffling to those Southerners who, for decades, have been making the case that it is strictly a symbol of Southern sacrifice from a war settled long ago. “Well, we are naturally suspicious of all politicians and political parties because they have completely politicized our symbols and history,” Kevin Stone, the commander of the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, wrote in an email this week. The group’s “constant battles,” he continued, “to keep monuments, flags and other symbols of Confederate heritage intact are usually hard fought, against long odds and without any political allies. ” | 1 |
The Democratic National Committee has seized the newly released federal budget plan to keep the government operating through September as a fundraising tool. [A mass email sent on Monday using DNC chairman Tom Perez’s name as the sender praised the appropriations bill as a win for Democrats. “Late last night, Democratic leaders reached a deal to stop a government shutdown, and it’s a major victory for all of us who are resisting the Trump agenda,” the email sent on Monday said. Those victories, the email claimed, include not cutting Planned Parenthood funding and not allowing “one red cent for Donald’s border wall. ” “And it only happened because you made sure Republicans knew there’d be hell to pay for backing Donald Trump’s agenda,” the email said, adding that the Republicans’ effort to do away with Obamacare and install “Trumpcare” is still in play. “We chalked up a big win yesterday, and that’s great,” the email said. “But we can’t afford to rest on our laurels,” the email concluded as it urged email recipients to make a donation to the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan ( ) said at a Capitol Hill press conference on Tuesday that there’s a lot of “conservative wins” in the budget, and that includes no funding for Planned Parenthood. “Planned Parenthood is not funded,” Ryan said, adding that the grants and reimbursements given to the nation’s largest abortion provider through the federal Title X Family Planning Program to the tune of millions of dollars annually will be up to Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price. “So we think there are some really good wins,” Ryan said. “I know there’s a PR machine that the Democrats are pushing. I’d say don’t look at the press releases look at the bill. ” “When you look at the bill, there’s a lot of good conservative wins here,” Ryan said. “But chief among them are the president’s two highest priorities: support the military and get a down payment on border security. ” Ryan said the “fight” for funding the border wall will come this summer. | 1 |
Protestors at the ( ) event featuring MILO and Martin Shkreli at UC Davis were seen jumping barricades and throwing them towards police as security risks prevented the event from going ahead. At least one protester was arrested. [University of California, Davis cancels event featuring Milo Yiannopoulos and Martin Shkreli after protests, fights pic. twitter. — BNO News (@BNONews) January 14, 2017, At least one protester was arrested. Protestors could also seen be wearing balaclavas, pushing other students whilst wearing badges and screaming chants comparing MILO to the KKK. Frances Wang, a reporter for ABC10, also revealed her photographer had hot coffee poured on his camera whilst conducting an interview. My photographer was doing an interview when someone poured hot coffee on him out equipment. @ucdavis @ABC10 pic. twitter. — Frances Wang (@ABC10Frances) January 14, 2017, The event was set to be the opening night of the final leg of MILO’s ‘Dangerous Faggot Tour.’ You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
posted by Eddie Millions of people around the world are constantly dealing with skin problems which are difficult to treat. People spend thousands on expensive skin care products, which are not always effective and contain harmful chemicals that can worsen the condition. However, there’s a simple natural solution for all your skin problems. Here’s how to prepare it: Ingredients 2 teaspoons of lemon juice Preparation Mix both ingredients well, then put the cream in a plastic container and put the container in a bowl of warm water, leaving it in for 2-3 minutes. Afterwards, apply the cream on a clean face and leave it to work for 20 minutes before rinsing with warm water. Apply a quality moisturizer in the end. The mask should be used a couple of times a week. Try it yourself and you will be amazed by the results! From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8968 Posts )
Eddie L. is the founder and owner of www.WorldTruth.TV. and www.Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media. | 0 |
AMIRIYAT FALLUJA, Iraq — One of the Iraqi civilians who risked an escape from the sprawling battle for Falluja made it as far as the Euphrates River. He was there for all to see on Sunday morning: His body, tied to the side of a boat, bobbed in the muddy waters next to a rickety bridge that separates Baghdad from the violence of Anbar Province. “Sheikh, sheikh, see this man! He drowned,” said a young boy, pointing, as he approached the window of a truck that was slowly crossing the bridge, carrying medicine. “See, see his body. ” The thousands of civilians who managed to flee Falluja and its outskirts and make it to areas in recent days faced harrowing journeys, often at night and under fire from Islamic State militants who had been trying to use them as human shields. Many crossed the wide Euphrates in makeshift boats, and local officials said more than a dozen drowned in the last few days, dying in their own country in the same way that thousands of Syrians and Iraqis have died on the seas trying to reach Europe. The survivors arrive at aid camps tired, hungry, thirsty and scared — and their ordeals are far from over. They are now in the arms of a government without the resources to care for them. “I risked my life because I was very concerned for my children and there was almost nothing inside Falluja — no food, no electricity, no fuel, nothing,” said a woman who arrived recently at a camp in Amiriyat Falluja, a city south of Falluja, and gave her name as Umm Bariq. But in the camp, she said, there are shortages of food, medicine and clean water. “So we are suffering here under difficult conditions,” the woman said. “We need help here. ” As bad as conditions are for civilians caught up in the battle, they are likely to get much worse. At least 50, 000 civilians are still trapped inside Falluja under Islamic State rule — perhaps 20, 000 of them children, according to the United Nations. Last week, the worry was that they would be killed in the crossfire as Iraqi forces and their Shiite militia allies stormed the city. Now, as the fighting has stalled on the outskirts in the face of fierce resistance by the Islamic State, a siege lasting weeks or months, in the heat of summer, could lead to mass starvation. There have been frantic negotiations, through intermediaries, between international aid agencies and Islamic State officials inside Falluja, seeking to open up corridors to deliver food and medicine. The problem is made worse, some aid workers say, by the Iraqi government’s tight control of traffic between Baghdad and Anbar Province, which has delayed the delivery of humanitarian supplies to the camps and the Falluja area. Out of security concerns, the Baghdad government, which is has long restricted the movement of people between the capital and Anbar, almost as if the two areas were separate countries. For some agencies, it can be difficult and to receive permission from the Iraqi government to travel across the bridge and deliver aid. In some instances, aid agencies have turned to a powerful Shiite militia, Kataib Hezbollah, which is controlled by Iran and in charge of an important checkpoint in Anbar, to get aid to the displaced. Also, as the offensive for Falluja unfolded, the Iraqi authorities were eager to facilitate access for journalists to the front lines, but have not allowed them to travel to areas to see displaced civilians. It was only because of an invitation to join a local aid agency’s convoy on Sunday that a reporting team from The New York Times was able to visit the camps for civilians fleeing the violence around Falluja. The areas of western Anbar Province, a region that has been a heartland for the Islamic State, have become vast wastelands of human suffering. tent cities are sprouting up all over, providing little more than basic shelter and some, but not nearly enough, food, water and medicine. The heat is terrible, always well above 100 Fahrenheit during the day, and most tents do not have fans or the electricity to run them. When Iraqi forces reached his town of Saqlawiya, north of Falluja, last week, Hatem Shukur waved a white flag to catch their attention. In an interview, he said he and his family had been given cold water, watermelon, apples and bananas — delights after months of being under siege. “But now we are facing another problem,” Mr. Shukur, 58, said. “Can you imagine your family living here in this heat?” He waved his arm around the space where he and his family live, a small square of concrete floor, a metal frame and plastic sheeting for walls. On the floor, lying on a blanket, was his granddaughter, Rawan, flies buzzing around her as she slept. Aid workers expressed frustration at their inability to meet the basic needs of civilians caught up in the war — there is not even enough fresh drinking water in the camps, officials said. There is always this question: Why is there always so much more money for military operations than for water and food for the civilians uprooted by them? “It just doesn’t make any sense to have invested so much in a military campaign to defeat Daesh and not provide lifesaving support to Iraqis in their hours of greatest need,” said Lise Grande, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official in Iraq, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Ms. Grande, who emphasized that the United Nations has not had difficulty with the Iraqi government in arranging deliveries of aid to Anbar, said the effort still faced a steep shortfall in funding from international donors. At the beginning of this year, the United Nations said it needed at least $860 million for pay for urgent humanitarian programs in Iraq. But so far the agency has raised just 30 percent of that sum, roughly $260 million, and is preparing to close down some vital programs this summer. Shiite militias have played a prominent role in the offensive to retake Falluja after nearly three years of Islamic State rule. But because of that, the battle is playing out amid persistent worries that the campaign could intensify the sectarian tensions that are tearing the country apart. The Sunni extremist fighters for the Islamic State have warned civilians that the Shiite militias would slaughter them in revenge attacks whenever possible. The news media in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have framed the battle in crass sectarian terms, warning that Iran’s militias were intent on killing Sunnis. But for the most part, civilians who have fled the areas around Falluja have said they had tired of the grim life under the Islamic State and had been treated well by the militias and Iraqi soldiers. “We were surprised that they treated us so well,” said a man at a camp who was in his 50s and gave his name as Abu Muhammad, standing on Sunday outside his tent. “Daesh had told us the Shiites wanted revenge and would kill us. ” Instead, he said, he was given cookies and orange juice. Many civilians have lost their lives trying to escape, either shot by the Islamic State, drowned in the river or felled by thirst and hunger during the hazardous hike to safety. Dr. Hassan Abdulfatah, the director of the Amiriyat Falluja hospital, said he had received 13 bodies of drowning victims over the weekend, including children, and of four others who he said had died of starvation or other ailments trying to reach safety. In every tent scattered across the many camps in Anbar is a sad story, but some are truly wrenching. In one there was a group of grieving women whose children had drowned the night before. One said she had lost three children: Suad, Suzan and Yacoob. Another woman said she had managed to make the river crossing, only to see her daughter and drown as they tried. “I was watching them,” she said. “I was yelling. ” | 1 |
PUTIN WANTS RADICALLY LIBERAL JEWISH BILLIONAIRE GEORGE SOROS DEAD OR ALIVE Oct 27, 2016 Previous post
RUSSIA HAVE OFFICIALLY DECLARED THAT BILLIONAIRE GEORGE IS A WANTED MAN IN THEIR COUNTRY, CITING HIM AND HIS ORGANIZATIONS AS A “THREAT TO RUSSIAN NATIONAL SECURITY”.
Putin banned Soros from Russia last year due to the fact that George helped to nearly destroy the Russian economy in the early 1990’s.
Now this could be the main reason for Obama pushing for war with Russia suddenly, because George is basically Obama’s puppet master.
If war with Russia does happen, would one of reasons for going to war with Russia be Obama trying to protect his commander George ? George has literally wrecked the Russian economy by pushing sanctions on Russia because of involvement in Syria,
but the main reason is Russia’s creation of their own banking system of the BRICS…Which likely means people like George Soros does not profit from.
Russia declaring George Soros their number one enemy is good news, because if they got to George Soros, things like the refugee crisis and Black
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Congress on Tuesday moved to dismantle online privacy rules created during the Obama era. The rules, which were scheduled to take effect this year, would have required internet providers to get permission before collecting and selling a customer’s online information, including browsing activities. What does this mean for your privacy and what can you do? Here’s what to know. Congress voted to overturn rules created by the Federal Communications Commission in October that required broadband providers to get your permission before collecting private data on your online activities and offering it for sale to advertisers. The truth is, you never had much online privacy. The new F. C. C. rules had not taken effect, so you probably won’t notice any difference. Internet service providers have always been able to monitor network traffic, see what websites you visit and share some of that information with advertisers. Yes. The new F. C. C. rules would have given consumers stronger privacy protections — without such restrictions, internet providers may decide to become more aggressive with data collection and retention. Expect more targeted advertising to come your way. These companies provide your connection to the internet. Your gadgets are each assigned an identifier, called an IP address, and an internet provider can see which IP addresses are being used on your account. When you are browsing the web, the service provider helps route your device’s internet traffic to each destination website. In other words, internet providers can see which devices you use and which websites you visit and choose to retain that data. Many privacy advocates say this a good time to consider investing in a virtual private network, or VPN. A VPN is a tunnel that shields your browsing information from your internet service provider and allows you to appear as if you are in a different location. However, a VPN isn’t a foolproof solution. A VPN service is also tied to a service provider, meaning a VPN provider could also share your information with the service provider if it wanted to, said Runa Sandvik, a director of information security for The New York Times. In other words, you will have to pick a VPN provider that has a strong privacy policy and take a leap of faith. Ms. Sandvik recommended Freedome by and said TunnelBear was another popular option. The Wirecutter, the product recommendations site owned by The New York Times, highlighted a service called Private Internet Access. People who are concerned about their privacy might also consider using Tor, a type of software that helps internet users mask their online identities and whereabouts, Ms. Sandvik said. Tor essentially encrypts your browsing activity and bounces a website request to multiple servers, decrypting layers of information about the request with every server “hop,” which makes it difficult to see from where and whom the original request came. Some services might break: for example, Netflix blocks VPN users from accessing its content. And Tor often makes web browsing sluggish. Ms. Sandvik recommended using a combination of the two whenever it feels necessary — like when you are accessing sensitive information related to your work, for instance. | 1 |
The French city of Lille is on lockdown after three people, including a boy, have been shot and injured near the Porte’d’Arras metro station in the southern part of the city. [According to local media, one of the injuries is while the other two are not. Armed police have now sealed the area and are surveilling the city. Whether the attack is terror related is currently unknown, although local police have claimed it was gang related. #Lille 3 blessés légers ce soir vers 21h45 dans une fusillade porte d’Arras. Piste terroriste écartée par la police via @ericturpin pic. twitter. — CDestracque (@CDestracque) March 24, 2017, The incident comes at a time when Europe is on high alert, after an Islamist attack in London killed four innocent people and injured 50, with two people still in critical condition. On Thursday, police also arrested a North African man in Antwerp, Belgium, who tried to drive a car into a crowd of people. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
SAN SALVADOR — On a sultry evening in late July, the Salvadoran authorities executed their very first assault on what they called the financial cupola of Mara Salvatrucha, or the largest of the ruthless gangs that have made El Salvador the murder capital of the world. Until that point, the National Civil Police had followed an almost choreographed routine, again and again, as they sought to cripple the gangs economically. In the dead of night, often accompanied by television cameras, officers would batter down the doors of ramshackle houses in marginalized communities and then arrest and put on display a cluster of tattooed and men. Between 2012 and 2015, the total amount confiscated in these showy raids was $34, 664. 75 — an absurdly tiny sum considering that the United States has designated as a global criminal organization on a par with the Zetas of Mexico, or the Yakuza of Japan. On July 27, however, in a mission baptized Operation Check, the authorities shifted gears. They deployed 1, 127 police officers to raid scores of supposed gang fronts, including car dealerships and bars, motels and brothels. With great fanfare, they presented to the news media rows and rows of impounded buses and cars, along with 77 suspects identified as the financial operatives of and their collaborators. Among them were the supposed C. E. O. of the street gang, Marvin Ramos Quintanilla, and two other leaders portrayed as controlling millions and possessing luxuries unimaginable to the destitute gang members beneath them. But the presentation was something of an exaggeration, as are many official characterizations of the gangs whose criminal sophistication and global reach tend to be overstated by authorities frustrated that they cannot vanquish them. For instance, that supposed chief executive officer hardly lived like a kingpin he leased a squat concrete house with a corrugated roof in a neighborhood where rents rarely reach $400. He owned an old Honda Civic and a Nissan van. In collaboration with The New York Times, El Faro, a digital newspaper based in San Salvador, sought to pierce the secrecy surrounding the finances of the gangs that terrorize El Salvador, which is experiencing a level of deadly violence unparalleled outside war zones: 103 homicides per 100, 000 residents last year, compared with five in the United States. With an estimated 60, 000 members in a country of 6. 5 million people, the gangs hold power disproportionate to their numbers. They maintain a menacing presence in 247 of 262 municipalities. They extort about 70 percent of businesses. They dislodge entire communities from their homes, and help propel thousands of Salvadorans to undertake dangerous journeys to the United States. Their violence costs El Salvador $4 billion a year, according to a study by the country’s Central Reserve Bank. And yet, the reporting determined, and its rival street gangs in El Salvador are not sophisticated transnational criminal enterprises. They do not begin to belong in the same financial league with the Mexican, Japanese and Russian syndicates with which they are grouped. If they are mafias, they are mafias of the poor. El Salvador has been brought to its knees by an army of flies. ’s annual revenue appears to be about $31. 2 million. That estimate is based on information in the file of Operation Check, to which El Faro got exclusive access. Wiretapped conversations reveal that the gang’s national leadership ordered its 49 “programs,” or chapters, to turn over all the money earned in a single, typical week, which happened to be in April. It collected $600, 852. It sounds like a lot of money. But if divided equitably among the estimated 40, 000 members of each gang member would earn $15 a week and about $65 a month. That is half the minimum wage of an agricultural day laborer. But the gangs — and its main rival, the 18th Street gang — do not distribute their proceeds equitably. They use them to pay for lawyers and funeral services, for weapons and munitions, and for the support of those serving long prison terms and their families. Theirs is a criminal subsistence economy even many of their leaders are barely solvent. “That the authorities call them ‘businessmen’ — either their intelligence is invalid or it’s pretty crude,” said Rolando Monroy, a former Salvadoran prosecutor who oversaw investigations until 2013. “The gangs are like an anthill. They are all after the same thing: something to eat. ” Unlike other groups considered global organized crime syndicates, the Salvadoran gangs do not survive on the international trafficking of cocaine, arms and humans. While they dabble in drug dealing, gun sales and prostitution, they engage primarily in a single crime committed over and over within Salvadoran territory: extortion. Inside El Salvador, they hold the reins of power largely because of a chilling demand repeated — or implied — daily across the country: Pay or die. “Look, the thing is we’re not joking around,” said one threat in childlike handwriting delivered to a bus owner recently. “Get something together. If not, we are going to burn one of your new minibuses. ” It was signed by the 18th Street gang: “18 sends its best. ” At 4 p. m. on a summer day in 2015, two young gang members intercepted a businessman as he was returning home from work. “I have kids. Calm down, please,” he managed to say before the youths grabbed him, threw him to the ground and shot him: in a shoulder, in the stomach, and twice in the face. They were delivering a message written in lead. “It was because of the extortion, not for any other reason,” the man’s son said. The man owned a bus. His son, who also owned a bus, said his father, tired of being extorted, had finally stopped making his $1 daily payment to the gang three weeks before his death. It murdered him because of $21. Among Salvadoran businesses, transportation companies, whose vehicles crisscross gang territory, have proved especially vulnerable to extortion. Over the last five years, it has been more dangerous to drive a bus than to fight gang crime: The gangs have killed 692 transportation workers — and 93 police officers. (This is according to an analysis of internal government data that, like most data in this article, is not considered public information but was obtained by El Faro.) Genaro Ramírez, the owner of a large bus company and a former member of Congress, calculates that he has handed over $500, 000 in gang extortion payments over the last 19 years. “It’s a matter of survival,’’ he said. “When they tell you they are going to kill you, you don’t have a choice. ” Between 2013 and 2015, the National Police received 7, 506 reports of extortion, which the authorities see as just a small fraction of the total. In the same period, some 424 gang members were convicted of this crime, most of them people who made the pickups and were caught with the cash. The payment of extortion by bus companies is so commonplace that some have employees whose principal role is to negotiate with the gangs, which are continually raising their rates and demanding extras like Christmas bonuses or buses to take them to the beach or to the funerals of associates. The only transportation company chief who has refused to be extorted — and has made his refusal public — is Catalino Miranda. Mr. Miranda owns a fleet of several hundred buses. Since 2004, the gangs have killed 26 of his employees. But he refuses to reconsider his position. “As I told one of them,” he said, referring to a gang representative, “go ahead and kill them. This cannot continue for a lifetime. ” Mr. Miranda spoke in his office, with a pistol lying atop a mess of papers on his desk, and rifles and flak jackets piled in a corner. He spends $30, 000 a month on security, he said. He has cameras posted in all his buses and stations, and eight security guards, armed with assault weapons, who patrol the gang zones his buses move through. When his employees are killed, he hires private detectives to investigate, because “the state does not have the capacity to protect witnesses. ” “They use you,” Mr. Miranda continued, “and they abandon you. ” Resisting the gangs is not an option for owners, however. Many of them live in neighborhoods themselves and cannot escape the pressure to pay. That was the situation for the bus owner killed in the summer of 2015. The bus owner’s son, who is 38, spoke of his father’s death in an restaurant beside the Highway. The son carried a pistol — he always has one by his side, even when he sleeps, he said — and sat facing the entrance, with his back to a ravine, so he could track comings and goings. Like most businessmen who recounted their experiences with shakedowns, the man spoke on the condition of anonymity. His father was one of 154 transportation workers who lost their lives to extortion rings in 2015. To talk is to risk becoming another statistic. It all started one afternoon in 2004, he recounted, when a couple of teenage gangsters boarded a bus on their route. The youths demanded the driver’s license and registration, reviewed the documents and then handed the driver a disposable phone before jumping off. After the shaken driver returned to the terminal, the phone rang. The voice on the other end laid out the terms of their new relationship: $10 a week not just for the one bus but for each of the 10 buses on the route. The man, his father and the other bus owners held an emergency meeting to discuss whether to report the demand to the police. Many victims do not bother. Extortion investigations require them to make payments to the gangs while the police watch and collect evidence. But the gangs almost always find out, and the victim is threatened or killed before the investigation is completed. Even so, the men decided to call the police. Soon, two detectives stationed themselves inside their terminal and, posing as bus owners, negotiated a rate with the gang: $1 a day per bus. Over the next three years, the police arrested three gang leaders, including one who lived next door to the man’s father. The investigation expanded to other crimes and dragged on. The bus owners kept paying extortion. The situation deteriorated. Between 2004 and 2012, killed five bus drivers on their routes and one of the police investigators assigned to their case. In 2012, the gang tried to kill the man himself, surrounding his house, he said at the restaurant. After his father’s murder, the gang increased its extortion on the route — to $1. 50 a day. The man sold his bus. When the Salvadoran authorities draw a flow chart of ’s organizational structure, they always put a mug shot of El Diablito de Hollywood, the Little Devil of Hollywood, at the very top. Hierarchically, El Diablito — Borromeo Henríquez Solórzano, 38 — is as far above “homeboy” as one can get. If gang leaders are enriching themselves at the expense of the rank and file, Mr. Henríquez should be the wealthiest capo di tutti. And yet. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, Mr. Henríquez and his family fled the Salvadoran civil war along with thousands of their compatriots who resettled in Los Angeles neighborhoods dominated by Mexican gangs. Mara Salvatrucha was born there and then. At the end of the 1990s, as part of an offensive and a crackdown on “criminal aliens,” the United States shipped planeloads of gang members made in the United States back to El Salvador and other Central American countries. El Diablito returned to his homeland in one of those waves of deportation. He was just a teenager, but in that era coming from Los Angeles conferred status in the branch of Mara Salvatrucha that had sprouted in El Salvador. (Loosely affiliated but largely autonomous branches now exist in other Central American countries and in pockets of the United States outside California.) It was like arriving with a seal of “original product,” and El Diablito, clever and garrulous, quickly parlayed that into a position of power. Prison, where he was sent in 1998 after getting a sentence for homicide, only solidified his stature. Soon after he was first locked up, Mr. Henríquez summoned the leader of one of Mara Salvatrucha’s most powerful cells to visit him in prison, the leader related in an interview. At that time, the gang had no reliable revenue stream, though members sold drugs on street corners, committed petty robberies and demanded small handouts from bus drivers. But Mr. Henríquez had a moneymaking plan, he told the leader. El Diablito said he wanted to institutionalize extortion nationwide, the leader related. He was insistent that the leader accede to the plan, or quit: would tolerate no dissidents. The leader communicated the new directive to his troops. A few years later, the leader quit and emigrated to Washington, D. C. where he now owns a small business in a Salvadoran neighborhood. Like El Diablito, most of the national gang leaders operate from behind bars. Through ready access to cellphones and private visits with lawyers, they retain tight control of their organizations — the money the gangs earn and the havoc they wreak. This became chillingly apparent in 2012 when the government was negotiating a truce with the gangs and Mr. Henríquez was emerging into the public eye as a spokesman for . The leaders sent out an order from behind bars: Stop killing. And from one day to the next, homicides dropped 60 percent to a level that, with small variations, was maintained until the government’s negotiations with the gangs, which were highly unpopular, ended two years later. During the truce, a team from El Faro was allowed to interview gang leaders in the Ciudad Barrios jail, which was dominated by . For over a decade, the gangs have been separated by institution to reduce internecine warfare this has had the unintended effect of strengthening them by uniting rather than dispersing their leadership. Dressed in baggy, black athletic attire, Mr. Henríquez insisted that he survived on money sent by relatives in the United States and by a brother who sold used cars in El Salvador. “Do you realize it is difficult to believe that one of the most visible leaders of does not derive a penny of his income from illicit activities?” a reporter from El Faro said. Mr. Henríquez paused, then responded: “My money does not come from extortion. ” But he was pressed: What about illicit activities more generally? El Diablito answered with a derisive smile: “It doesn’t come from extortion. ” And all the other gang leaders laughed, cryptically. That year — 2012 — the United States Treasury Department designated as a transnational criminal organization, alongside four criminal syndicates: the Zetas, the Yakuza, the Russian Brothers’ Circle and the Italian Camorra. It was the first street gang that had ever received that designation. The next year, the Treasury put personal sanctions on Mr. Henríquez, which had the effect of forbidding Americans to do business with him and authorizing federal investigators to freeze his financial assets. No evidence has surfaced that any of Mr. Henríquez’s properties or assets in the United States were frozen. Sanctions were also placed on El Diablito’s wife, Jenny Judith Corado. The Salvadoran government arrested her in 2013 and accused her of belonging to a Mara Salvatrucha extortion ring. It could not prove her connection to the ring, however she was freed and ordered to turn over the money that a judge considered the provenance of extortion: $50. Now, Ms. Corado does not appear to be enjoying a life of luxury or even comfort. With her children beside her, she spends her days hawking used clothing and lingerie from a stall constructed of tin cans in the busy public marketplace of San Salvador. In the news conference announcing Operation Check (as in the chess move) the authorities spoke of gang leaders’ “luxuries,” their “investments” and their “various millions of dollars. ” “These leaders are living a different life than the gang members beneath them,” Douglas Meléndez, the attorney general, said. “The gang members beneath them should know. ” It was a communiqué directed at the street, at those gangsters who put their lives on the line for little tangible reward: While their leaders may have been preaching a doctrine of brotherhood, they were secretly enriching themselves at the expense of their brothers, their soldiers, their homeboys. The luxuries, however, consisted of 22 imported but used cars, each valued at about $8, 000. The confiscated cash amounted to $34, 500. And the investments numbered three: a taqueria and bar in Soyapango, a community in the San Salvador metropolitan area a vegetable stand in a rural marketplace and a highway restaurant that is decorated with a deer’s head, offers karaoke and has three waiters who primarily serve buckets of beer bottles. The gangs’ credo of fraternity and equality does not allow for any personal gain at the expense of the brotherhood, and they at least theoretically enforce it brutally. “He who makes himself rich at the expense of the street is going to die,” a leader of the 18th Street gang said in an interview. So even a vegetable stand is a risky venture, and the wiretapped conversations in the Operation Check file reveal that some gang leaders went so far as to pay extortion fees to their own gangs on their private businesses in order to hide their involvement with them. Howard Cotto, the general director of the National Police, estimated in an interview that 50 to 70 gang leaders, including Mr. Henríquez, have accumulated some money or business interests. But only enough, he said, to permit their families to escape “conditions of poverty, overcrowding, unhealthy conditions and sheet metal” and have a chance at a future. “I cannot say the leaders are living in places of luxury,” he acknowledged. Most of the leaders, in fact, are expected to spend the rest of their lives in prison, either in solitary confinement or in malodorous cells shared with dozens of others. One day in 2014, an imprisoned leader of the 18th Street gang who goes by the alias Chiki was issuing instructions to a gang member identified as Shaggy. Speaking by phone from the Izalco penitentiary, Chiki, who was serving time for extortion, ordered Shaggy to make a pickup of an extortion payment. It was $100 from an operation in Colonia Rubio in the department of La Unión. And, though Shaggy risked up to 20 years in prison if caught, there was something special in it for him, Chiki said. “Keep two bucks so you can get yourself something to eat,” Chiki said, in what turned out to be a wiretapped conversation. He added: “And tell El Demente,” the Demented One, “to give you some custards for your kid. ” Chiki, whose real name is José Luis Guzmán, was the third in command of the 18th Street gang’s Southerners faction in eastern El Salvador. Another prison wiretap recording showed an even 18th Street leader, Carlos Ernesto Mojica, getting involved in negotiations with a chicken vendor who sought to lower her monthly extortion payment to $200 from $400. That these leaders were overseeing such operations typifies the pettiness of gang business. While officials publicly portray the gangs as international criminal syndicates and law enforcement records and data tell a different story — as do some authorities when speaking privately or in interviews. In the four years before Operation Check, the biggest sum collected in a police raid was $6, 377 some raids netted only $5. “I have never had a case involving the quantity of money necessary to maintain organized crime,” said Nora Montoya, a judge who has handled gang extortion cases for decades. Similarly, Mr. Cotto, the police director, said the term “ ” was “sensationalism” and could be misinterpreted as suggesting that Salvadoran street gangs were working directly with the Gulf Cartel or the Zetas in the transshipment of drugs from South America to the United States. “This is not the case. It is definitely not the case,” he said. Although Salvadoran gangs sell drugs, they do it like dealers, not international operatives. From 2011 to 2015, the National Police seized 13. 9 kilograms of cocaine from gangs that was less than 1 percent of the total seized. of the gang members prosecuted on drug charges over the last few years were charged with possessing less than an ounce. A veteran cocaine dealer in San Salvador said serious organizations wanted nothing to do with the street gangs, which are considered unreliable and volatile. “The wholesalers I work with would not sell to the gang guys,” he said. “They don’t trust them. ” Over a decade ago, the police confiscated an account ledger from José Luis Mendoza Figueroa, a founder of that contained no evidence of any drug business. Instead it showed weekly receipts that averaged $14 from the 19 “cliques” — the smallest gang units — he controlled, and trivial outlays for bullets ($8) taxis ($25) Christmas dinners, liquor and “$50 for the homeboys in prison. ” A couple of years ago, federal agents seized a similar ledger from the treasurer of the Park View Locos clique of the in Usulután in southeast El Salvador. A log of one day’s expenses showed $30 for a cellphone chip, $10 for “mujer chief” (the chief’s wife or woman) $35 for “another woman” and $10 for food, with $29 listed as the balance. The notebook also contained the gang member’s grandiose musings: “The day I die I want to be remembered as a strong soldier, a committed delinquent, and at the hour that the shots ring out, I want to be marked ‘present. ’” According to an internal code, only leaders can speak on behalf of the 18th Street gang. But in the rural department of La Paz, one of the most violent in El Salvador, a gang member clambered to his feet from an old mattress on the dirt floor of a house to defy that rule. He had agreed to grant an interview on two conditions: that his identity be protected, and that breakfast be provided. The boy, gangly and pimply, is a fledgling member of the 18th Street Revolutionaries, a faction of the 18th Street gang, and he works as an extremely roadside extortionist. He collects $15 monthly from each of three food trucks that rumble through his district carrying chewing gum, Pepsi sodas and Bimbo bread. He then turns over the proceeds to the leader of his clique. “All the loot goes to weapons,” the youth said he himself was awarded a pistol and many nights takes it out on “patrol. ” Like so many young recruits, the teenager is an obedient soldier who risks his life to protect his territory without earning a penny from his organization. It is a bargain for the gang leaders who manage the gang economy: tens of thousands of grunts who are not seeking personal profit, only respect and a sense of belonging. One of 14 children, the boy never went to school and does not know how to read or write. He probably could have found work in the nearby fields, where, even if conditions were miserable, he would have earned $100 a month. But, feeling bullied and vulnerable at 13, he believed that gang membership would give him something less tangible but more valuable at that age. “I was a kid: I was stupid,” he said about joining. “A bunch of crazy guys were messing with me because I was a kid, smacking me in the head, knocking me around. It made me think: I have had enough. Since I joined up, nobody screws with me. ” The department of La Paz, with all its production, is fairly lucrative for the gangs. The Federation of Associations of Sugar Cane Producers said in June that its members had paid $1. 5 million in extortion fees over a recent period. But none of that trickles down to the rank and file. So in order to survive, the boy runs his own little racket on the side: “private extortion,” gang members call it. His particular clique forbids members to extort their neighbors. Instead, he collects and pockets “rent” from a few poor businesses on the periphery of his clique’s zone. He said he netted $40 a month — “only enough for what I’m going to eat. ” Despite his age, he is mostly left to fend for himself by a hapless mother with too many mouths to feed. While the teenage gang member talked, three of his little siblings circled the breakfast — scrambled eggs, beans and plantains — that waited in cartons on the floor. He gave his younger brother permission to open a carton. The little boy, who had matted hair and a dirty face, let out a squeal of delight, and proceeded to attack the meal with his hands. In two years of gang life, the teenager has already witnessed and participated in significant bloodshed. He said he had been involved in two “collective homicides. ” In both cases, members of a rival gang had dared to breach the invisible border that separates from 18th Street territory. One man was looking to buy some marijuana the other to meet girls at a village festival. They were killed for their defiance. In the spring, the leader of the teenager’s clique — whom he knew as Shadow — died in what the police described as a clash between the authorities and gang members. The boy was not present, but he had witnessed the deaths of three other clique members in February in another encounter described as a clash, he said. The boy said none of his homeboys had been carrying weapons that winter day. Hiding in a trash pile, he watched as the police killed his friends, teenagers like him, and then, he said, placed guns around their bodies to make it look as if they had fallen in crossfire. Two neighbors who are not gang members supported his version of events in interviews, and it is not : El Salvador’s attorney general for human rights has 31 open cases against the police for alleged summary executions of 100 gang members over the last year and a half. The day of that interview and in conversations throughout the summer, the boy made it clear he was scared of the police. Since February, officers had been stopping by his house from time to time, and he had spent much of his time hiding from them in the mountains. “I need to save money to get out of here,” he said. “If they catch me, they’re not going to let me live. ” They did catch him, in October, and arrested him for extorting $40 — his private extortion — from a local merchant. He was jailed, and faces up to 15 years in prison. As violence peaked in 2015, reaching levels unseen since the aftermath of El Salvador’s long and brutal civil war, entire communities abandoned their homes because of gang threats. It became such a recurring phenomenon that television channels interrupted their programming to broadcast live the precise moment in which dozens of families fled, on foot or in pickup trucks tightly packed with suitcases, mattresses, chickens and pigs. Having failed to guarantee them daily security, the police nonetheless supervised their moves. Pedro González, the chief of the unit, showed up at one mass exodus, from a condominium building in suburban San Salvador. After imploring residents in vain to stay put, he led them in an alternate response. “It doesn’t matter who here is Catholic or evangelical, let us raise a prayer,” he said. “That is the most important, let us turn to God. ” Over the years, the Salvadoran authorities have tried to quash the gangs with military might, to prosecute them into oblivion, to banish them with lengthy prison terms and, briefly, to negotiate with them. (The dialogue was corrupted by, among other things, the secret efforts of the two major political parties to court the gang leaders’ electoral support at the same time.) When the government ratcheted up its “iron fist” approach last year, three gangs, working in coordination, responded with a show of force. On a Sunday night, they distributed written and oral messages to bus owners and employees: “He who takes out a vehicle tomorrow is going to end up glued to his steering wheel. ” To underscore their seriousness, they killed a driver and burned three microbuses as a warning. The next day, six drivers who had disobeyed their order were killed. The authorities sent soldiers and tanks into the streets, and deployed government vehicles to substitute for the buses, but the gangs succeeded in almost completely paralyzing San Salvador’s transportation system for four days. Some 1. 3 million Salvadorans were affected many high schools and universities suspended classes and the economy suffered an $80 million loss, according to the Chamber of Commerce. It was a ruthless show of force. This year, with Operation Check, the government conducted one of its most professional law enforcement efforts to date, and comments by senior officials suggested a new willingness to approach the gangs as a complex phenomenon with deep roots in the profound inequalities of a country where a third of the population lives in poverty. Yet by hyping its findings, the government continued to misrepresent the gangs as sophisticated criminal organizations, ruthlessly driven by a thirst for financial gain. And though in Operation Check it acknowledged a distinction between the culpability of leaders and members, that distinction was lost on the street. The authorities have continued to treat all gangsters as mortal enemies and have doubled down on their use of force. Some 424 gang members had died in confrontations with the police this year as of September. “If the use of force is not the correct path in this moment, at this stage, at this juncture, then what is? ’’ Óscar Ortiz, the country’s vice president, asked in late October. The government cites as evidence a recent drop in murders: 4, 431 by compared with 5, 363 by that point in 2015. But that is still the second highest toll since 1995. In Operation Check, the government sought to sow dissent in gang ranks by portraying the leaders of as profiteers. Afterward, a written message sent out from a Mara prison demanded that “justice” be meted out to those revealed by Operation Check to have betrayed the gang, according to an American official in El Salvador who monitors the gangs. As of yet, though, there do not seem to have been any revenge killings, internal purges or mass defections. For a gang member tired of the gang life, at any rate, there is nowhere to go. Those who are not incarcerated are marked, quite literally with tattoos, for life. There are no rehabilitation centers where they can seek refuge, no programs to reintegrate them into society and no initiatives aimed at youths. The only alternatives appear to be those that gang members themselves on walls throughout the country: “Jail or the Cemetery. ” | 1 |
Jamie Dimon told a hostile crowd of shareholders Tuesday morning that he supports President Donald Trump out of a sense of patriotic duty. [“He is the president of the United States, he is the pilot flying the airplane. I’d try to help any president of the US because I’m a patriot. That does not mean I agree with every policy he is trying to implement,” the chairman and chief executive of J. P. Morgan Chase said at the bank’s annual meeting Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware. Dimon has compared the president to an airplane pilot in the past. “When you get on the airplane, you better be rooting for the success of the pilot,” Dimon said at a townhall event hosted by Yahoo Finance in April. During the question and answer portion of the annual meeting, a number of shareholders called on Dimon to publicly disavow Trump and his policies, particularly Trump’s immigration stance. Dimon listened to several speeches from shareholders before he responded. Dimon said that he agreed with Trump’s plans to reform the corporate tax system. “Our corporate tax system is driving capital and brains overseas and excessive regulation is reducing growth and business formation particularly for small businesses,” he said. The chief executive also commented on bank regulation, saying that some of the rules put in place after the financial crisis went too far and should be pulled back. “We are not looking to throw out the entirety of or other rules. It is, however, appropriate to open up the rulebook in the light of day and rework the rules and regulations that don’t work well or are unnecessary,” Dimon said. | 1 |
This interview contains spoilers for Sunday’s episode of “Game of Thrones. ” The beginning of Season 5 of “Game of Thrones” was a time of great excitement for Arya Stark, the fiery young woman, played by Maisie Williams, who is on a mission to right the many wrongs done to her and her tormented family. After finally leaving the hostile Westeros countryside behind, she was on a boat to Braavos, exploring a new world with dreams of a vengeful, exciting life as a highly trained assassin. Sunday’s Season 6 premiere illustrated how badly Arya miscalculated her prospects. After running afoul in last season’s finale of the rules of the Faceless Men, the religious order training her, she is now freshly blind, and spent Sunday’s episode begging in the streets when she wasn’t being whacked with a stick by a girl called the Waif (Faye Marsay). [ Recap: “Game of Thrones” Season 6 premiere ] “If she doesn’t learn to fight without her eyes, she’s getting hit,” Ms. Williams said recently. “The Waif, she’s evil. ” Ms. Williams discussed fighting blind, impatient Arya fans and what Season 6 holds for the youngest Stark daughter. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Q. Where do things stand with Arya now? A. You can’t comprehend being without your eyes, and you have to put your faith and trust in the people around you, who are also the ones who put you in that position. She has no other choice. So that’s a really interesting position to see her in, because she’s never had to trust someone. It’s a very vulnerable place for her to be at the beginning of the series, but things will turn around. How does this fit into her overall evolution? Because she’s gonna use it all again — these are all skills that she’s gonna take with her. A lot of people found Arya’s Season 5 really boring. They were like, “Why is she sweeping floors? Why is she getting hit on the hands?” But this is about a process that she’s going through and its ultimately going to be the best weapon. And when that day comes, when she uses all of this, everyone’s gonna be like, “Wow, that’s so cool!” Which is great, but it wouldn’t have been as cool if you hadn’t seen her go through that process. No one becomes a [warrior] overnight, guys. Give her a break. Is it hard to act blind? For a lot of the I had contact lenses that were opaque, so I couldn’t see anything anyway. For the fight scenes, I had contact lenses I could see through. But that was more of a health and safety thing, because I was wielding a stick and poor Faye didn’t want to get hit in the face. But she still did. Did she really? Not in the face. We just clipped each other a couple of times. So that was you in the fight scene in the premiere, not a stunt double? That one was all me. There’s stuff later on that we had girls help us with. There’s a shot in the trailer of you taking a flying leap. Yeah that gets a lot more technical. There were two wonderful stunt doubles. How has Arya’s perspective changed since last season? Arya was quite shallow. “I’m gonna be a sick killer and then have my list, and I’m gonna go back and avenge my family. ” It was such a childish way of thinking about it. Then she got there and realized this isn’t a joke this isn’t like a holiday camp your parents send you off to. I know you can’t get into plot details … I’m giving you really good hints. [Laughs.] I feel like I’m selling this season really well. But can you speak more broadly about what Season 6 is about for her? It’s her second chance. She’s learning to fight blind, and at the beginning people are going to have that same opinion of, “God, this is so boring. Why isn’t Arya the [warrior] she used to be?” O. K. let’s take away your sight and see how you do without it. There are episodes when it’s going to be really difficult to watch. Arya, who we’ve always loved, is getting pulled apart. But she will ultimately use it to her advantage, just as she always does. She takes every negative and uses it as a positive, and that happens in a big way this year. | 1 |
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A member of our Liberty Alliance family was recently hammered by Facebook censors for providing content that proved to be too honest to share on social media. The ladies at 100% Fed Up have been doing their patriotic duty for several years now, and they’ve built up quite a following on social media. In fact, they’re well over 850K followers on Facebook, where they share most of their cutting edge, unvarnished content with other patriots. Recently, they woke up to find that their page had been shut down by the liberal extremists who lord over Facebook’s content.
The 100% Fed Up ladies recently spoke to Breitbart about the persecution they, and other conservative groups, have faced at the hands of the media giants at Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
“It’s a sickening feeling to know you’re being censored not for any horrible thing you’ve done, but for trying to tell the truth to millions of people. Are we living in America? Seriously, our First Amendment rights have been slowly eroding away bit by bit…
When we woke-up and saw a note at the top of our Facebook page, with no explanation as to why, telling us that our page had been ‘unpublished and cannot be published again,’ our greatest fear was realized…
The 100 Percent FED UP Facebook page was borne out of frustration by Patty and I after we discovered how far left our media had become. We were frustrated by the lack of desire by so-called journalists to investigate corrupt dealings with our politicians in Washington, or to reveal the truth about illegal immigration, or the abuse of our veterans, entitlement programs and so much more.”
Read the whole story over at Breitbart .
Lest you think this is a one-time random problem that just happened to occur during the presidential race, our good friend (and another Liberty Alliance partner) Joe Newby recently wrote a book cataloguing Facebook’s history of censorship in defense of liberal and jihadi causes. The book is called Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad , and it is a must read for anyone interested in free speech issues.
While militant jihad is exploding throughout the Islamic world, westerners are increasingly subjected to gravely perilous circumstances. Americans, Israelis, and Europeans are in their direct crosshairs.
Jihadists congregate on social media, “friend” like-minded Islamists, and plot global jihad. With over 1.6 billion users worldwide, Facebook is the world’s largest social media site. It has become the de factoInternet since nearly every site connects to it. With that size comes great power–the power to lift up and the power to destroy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to stifle negative stories of “migrants” and assured Muslims he would make his site a welcoming place for them. Banned explains how social media in general and Facebook in particular seems to operate with a double standard that ultimately enables militant Islamic jihad.
If you care about Facebook’s censorship of conservative causes, please get involved and start sharing our content and the content of sites like 100% Fed Up and Conservative Firing Line . We can’t win this battle against liberal fascism unless we work together to overcome the censorship of the left.
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Heseltine strangled dog as part of Thatcher cabinet initiation ceremony 01-11-16 LORD Heseltine has admitted strangling his mother’s dog for his initiation into Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. The 83-year-old peer said that every member of Thatcher’s inner circle was forced to take a life and steal something irreplaceable from close family to prove they were outside bourgeois morality. He continued: “It’s an idea I believe she took from Aleister Crowley. I decided to get both my trials over with at once and choked the dog with my bare hands. “My mother never forgave me, of course, but I have to say it worked. From that moment on I had no sentimental respect for life, and human suffering was no longer any impediment to policy. “Of course, I was still terribly upset by what she did to Westland. That poor helicopter company. Still brings tears, even now.” The revelation follows Sir Geoffrey Howe’s admission that he threw a chimp from a moving train, Lord Tebbit’s boast of thrashing owls with a riding crop in the Cabinet Room, and Nigel Lawson’s confession that he hypnotised a swan to fly into a brick wall.
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November 16, 2016 - By Eduard Popov for Fort Russ - translated by J. Arnoldski -
Several days ago, big news gripped headlines: Russia’s Minister of Economic Development, Aleksey Ulyukaev, was arrested for receiving a bribe in the amount of $2 million. The supposedly unsinkable minister is now confessing enormous evidence to detectives of the Investigative Committee.
A little later, the news appeared that President Vladimir Putin had received all information on the progress of the investigation of the minister. In other words, Ulyukaev’s appeal to the president will come to naught, as the head of state was informed from the beginning on the course of investigations against corrupt members of the government.
On the same day that Ulyukaev was arrested, the heads of law enforcement agencies and deputies to the governor of the Kemerovo region were also arrested for taking bribes. Today, November 16th, additional news has emerged: the investigation is being carried out not only against now ex-minister Ulyukaev, but also a number of senior officials. This has been reported by the newspaper Vedomosti citing a senior employee in security agencies.
According to the report of this well-informed publication, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, presidential aide Andrey Belousov, aide to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Marina Romanova, and the head of the Economic Development Department, Oksana Tarasenko, have also become targets of the investigation.
What does all of this mean? Several things are immediately indicated.
1. Purges in the state apparatus can now touch even the highest spheres, up to the level of ministers and vice ministers.
2. The “hunt” for corrupt high-ranking officials has a systemic character as evidenced by the number of people potentially subject to investigations and the breadth of its geographical and institutional reach.
3. A blow is being inflicted first and foremost against representatives of the pro-Western liberal grouping in the Russian establishment. In the opinion of specialists asked by the author, Ulyukaev was no professional in his work. Even less of a competent professional is Dvorkovich, the youngest and perhaps most incompetent vice minister in the Russian government. How the outcome of this rapid investigation against him will end is still unknown. But the chair beneath him has been shaken.
Of course, it is too early to draw any far-reaching conclusions. But certain facts suggest that the purge in the higher echelons of power is gaining tremendous momentum. Several months ago, we wrote in an article for Fort Russ that President Putin is getting rid of (1) the corrupt and (2) the liberal-Westernist layer of the Russian ruling elite. Now this opinion is being backed by supporting evidence. These purges began after the Russian parliamentary elections and after the change (even if not yet official) of the US administration.
I would posit that both factors are significant, and the circumstances are not accidental. If we are right, then Russia and its president are starting a new game at home and on the international field.
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in: Faith , Society , US News America is never going to be great again until we deal with the wickedness in our own hearts. In recent days I have listened to so many national leaders tell us that Donald Trump is going to win the election and that this will usher in a new golden age of blessing and prosperity for America. Supposedly this is going to happen even though we continue to slaughter babies on an industrial scale, sexually-transmitted diseases are spreading at the fastest pace in decades, the percentage of births out of wedlock is more than 10 times higher than in 1940, and approximately two out of every three Christian men watch pornography on a regular basis. Even though there aren’t any signs of widespread national repentance, we are supposedly going to be showered with wealth, favor, protection and good times for as far as the eye can see. You can believe this if you want, but it doesn’t have any basis in reality. The truth is that we live in a nation where just about every type of evil that you can possibly imagine is spreading like wildfire. Just look at the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. According to the CDC, there are 20 million new cases of sexually-transmitted disease in the United States every year. And last year, cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis grew at a very alarming pace … Cases of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States have reached new highs, including an increase in syphilis not seen since the mid-1990s, federal health officials said in a report this week. There were 1.5 million chlamydia cases in 2015 — the last year that numbers were available — a 6 percent increase from the year before, and about 400,000 infections of gonorrhea, or a 13 percent rise , according to a report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . But syphilis cases increased to levels unseen since the mid-1990s. There were nearly 24,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis cases last year, a 19 percent hike compared with 2014. We are a nation that has fully embraced the “free love” philosophy of the 1960s. We have sex with whoever we want, whenever we want, and we don’t seem to care about the consequences. As a result, the nuclear family is rapidly being destroyed. Back in 1940, 3.8 percent of all babies were born to women that were not married. Today, that number is over 40 percent . 2008 (the year Barack Obama was elected) was the very first year in our history when 40 percent of all babies were born to unmarried mothers, and we have now stayed at that level for eight straight years . If we want to make America great again, we can start by not sleeping with people that we are not married to. But of course an increasing number of Americans (especially our young people) are discarding traditional notions of love, marriage and sexuality completely. At one time we were told that the choice was between “gay” and “straight”, but now many people have decided that they want absolutely no limits. Miley Cyrus is among those that are now identifying themselves as “pansexuals”. The following comes from a recent article by Jennifer LeClaire … “My mom is like an ’80s rock chick—big blonde hair. … She loves being a girl,” Cyrus said. “I never felt that way. I know some girls that love getting their nails done. I … hated it … I don’t wax my eyebrows. I never related to loving being a girl. And then, being a boy didn’t sound fun to me. I think the LGBTQ alphabet could continue forever. But there’s a ‘P’ that should happen, for ‘pansexual.’” According to Google , a “pansexual” is “not limited in sexual choice with regard to biological sex, gender, or gender identity.” Millions of young girls look up to Miley Cyrus as a role model. We knew that this sort of thing was coming in the last days, but it is still hard to grasp how far America has fallen. And if you try to speak out against this wave of evil, you might just lose everything. For instance, the bakery in Oregon that didn’t want to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple has been forced to close their doors permanently … The Oregon bakery that made news after it refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding has closed after legal battles left the business financial devastated, according to a Christian news site. Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, have shut down their bakery, according to the store’s Facebook page. ‘We have closed Sweet Cakes. We appreciate everyone’s continued prayer and support,’ the post said. We live in a nation where the culture has been fundamentally transformed. According to a newly released Pew Research Center survey , an all-time high 57 percent of all Americans believe that marijuana should be legalized and only 37 percent are against it. With that kind of a margin, it is only a matter of time before marijuana is legalized all over the country. We also live in a nation that is absolutely addicted to watching other people have sex. And most Christian men cannot even speak out about this epidemic because they are doing it themselves. According to Charisma News , one survey found that an astounding 68 percent of all Christian men admit that they watch pornography on a regular basis. But even if we turned away from all of the other behaviors that I have just mentioned, there would still be no hope for our nation as long as we continue to murder babies on an industrial scale. Did you see the final debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? During that debate, Clinton made it exceedingly clear that she is in favor of abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. The Democratic platform openly calls for taxpayer funding of abortion and a complete repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and Bill and Hillary Clinton have made abortion one of the central pillars of their very long political careers. Their hands are absolutely drenched with the blood of dead children, and the American people are about to reward her by making her the next president of the United States . So no, I don’t buy it when people try to tell me that America is on the verge of a new era of greatness. The truth is that we are a cesspool of wickedness and filth, and unless we repent we are going to reap a very bitter harvest from what we have sown for so many years. Submit your review | 0 |
Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). California Today will also rely on, and amplify, your voices. Tell us about the issues that matter to you — and what you’d like to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. Want to receive California Today by email? Sign up. Let’s get to it. I just moved back to California after a long exile on the East Coast. I’m a Californian — born outside Sacramento, where lawmakers come and go, and raised in San Juan Capistrano, where swallows do the same. I wanted to dive right in. So I’ve been asking as many people as possible: What should California Today be paying attention to? Five answers that stood out: • We hear a lot, rightly, about drought and wildfires, but Californians should also be alarmed about another threat, said Steven Hackett, a Humboldt State economist who has focused on natural resources. The Pacific has been soaking up enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from human emissions, a process known as ocean acidification. Professor Hackett said, if left unchecked, it could set off “tremendous cascading effects,” devastating California’s marine ecosystems. “There are a lot of questions about, ‘What can we do about that? ’” he said. • Specialists see no end in sight to California’s housing shortage, which promises to worsen homelessness and fights over gentrification. Lateefah Simon, a Bay Area activist, said we should be talking more about another of its effects: the punishing commutes that people face as they are priced out of urban centers. With spotty public transportation, and rising fares, they endure hourslong trips into San Francisco and other cities. “Infrastructure is not a sexy thing for young millennials. It’s not something you talk about everyday,” said Ms. Simon, who is running for a seat on BART’s board of directors. “We need to change that. ” • Carson Bruno, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, warned that unless a solution appears to the housing crisis, which he blamed in part on the misuse of environmental law, Bay Area businesses would begin to flee the state. “California faces a lot of challenges,” he said. “But this one has the potential to eliminate the California dream entirely. ” • Camille Rose Garcia, an artist in Northern California, talked about a of the gallery scenes of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The spread of digital culture has led to “a circumventing of the galleries that is making some of them irrelevant,” Ms. Garcia said. The shift can be empowering for artists, especially younger ones, who increasingly connect with buyers directly online and through social media. “There is no more of the gallery holding the golden key to the kingdom,” she said. • Finally, Mona Field, a political scientist in Los Angeles, talked about another this one on the near horizon. Californians are facing a November ballot with, count them, 17 measures. To name a couple: marijuana legalization and the repeal of the death penalty. “It’s preposterous that they are all on one ballot,” she said, suggesting that California Today do a series that analyzes each proposition. Challenge accepted, Ms. Field. (Stay tuned.) • “Amazing,” “” “riveting. ” That’s how readers are reacting to “Framed,” a true crime saga involving a PTA mother in Irvine. [Los Angeles Times] • In reliably Democratic California, the action through Election Day is going to be in the voter initiatives, not the presidential race. Analysts expect close to $100 million in ad spending, writes Adam Nagourney, our Los Angeles bureau chief. [The New York Times] • President Obama on Monday waded into the debate over Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem. He said he did not doubt the sincerity of the 49ers quarterback’s protest. [The New York Times] • Santa Ana is on edge over its booming homeless population. One encampment has spread out along the dry bed of the Santa Ana River. A student journalist captured intimate photos of life in “Skid River. ” [Voice of OC] • Among the Silicon Valley elite, meanwhile, so few homes are on the market that buyers are getting more aggressive in approaching owners who haven’t officially decided to sell. [The New York Times] • How do Uber drivers decide when to call it a day? Many newer ones do the opposite of what economic rationality would seem to dictate. [The New York Times] • Hugh O’Brian, who played a peace officer on “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” from 1955 to 1961, died in Beverly Hills on Monday. He was 91. [The New York Times] • Vin Scully, the Dodgers’ broadcasting great, will call his last game on Oct. 2. Richard Sandomir, a Times columnist, said it would be a shame if TBS does not give him a national audience. [The New York Times] • Workers have installed the final piece of the spire atop the Wilshire Grand in downtown Los Angeles, making it the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi River. [Los Angeles Times] • Burning Man, the yearly carnival of in the Nevada desert, wrapped up over the weekend. Jim Urquhart, a Reuters photographer, caught the pageantry. [The Atlantic] Craig Claiborne at The New York Times invented the modern restaurant review. Since 1963 the newspaper’s reviews have been confined to the New York region. Now, Pete Wells is taking The Times’s starred review on the road, visiting Cassia, an Asian restaurant in Santa Monica. Even after a wary moment with gnarled pig tail, Mr. Wells praised the chef’s skill in creating big flavors without resorting to extremes. • On Wednesday, Apple will hold its annual fall event in San Francisco. It’s expected to unveil its next iPhone. Are they going to ditch the headphone jack? • The 1995 crime drama “Heat” had three big stars, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro — and Los Angeles. All will be on hand Wednesday night when the Academy screens an ultra restoration in Beverly Hills. A Q. and A. will follow. • With the potential for a huge new market in California, marijuana entrepreneurs will gather to talk business Wednesday through Friday at the Cannabis World Congress and Business Exposition in Los Angeles. • The San Francisco Fringe Festival kicks off Friday. The theater world’s answer to the bar crawl, the festival will present 38 shows over 16 days. • Fall is coming, folks. The Lake Tahoe Autumn Food and Wine Festival will greet the season beginning Friday and culminating with a wine contest on Sunday. There will be cooking demonstrations, mixology courses and a kids’ zone. When I told Kevin Starr, one of the state’s historians, about the California newsletter, he kindly offered to share his contacts. Then came an admonition. “Please also pay attention not just to where California screwed up, but on things that are going well here,” he said. “Somebody has to explain why we are the sixth largest G. N. P. on the planet. ” Asked if he could explain it, he laughed. “Because of the interaction of all sort of things,” he said, “a talented population, of very educated people, the ascendancy of the entertainment business, the ascendancy of the digital business . .. ” He went on to mention biotech, agriculture and California’s role as an arbiter of good design. James Canton, a futurist in San Francisco, described California as the nation’s engine of innovation. We face serious problems. But, he said, there’s no better population to tackle them. “Californians are constantly inventing the future,” he said. “And that future inevitably translates into jobs and wealth creation and opportunity, particularly for immigrants. ” California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended Cal Berkeley. On Twitter, follow Mike McPhate (@mmcphate) and reach us using #CAToday. | 1 |
ATLANTA — At least 18 people were killed and 43 more injured in Georgia and Mississippi after thunderstorms and tornadoes roared through the South this weekend, leaving some things standing and some things fallen, some lives whole and others blown to bits. Charles McDowell, pastor of Barney United Methodist Church in Barney, Ga. was safe at home in nearby Valdosta on Sunday. So was the modest church where he preaches to his flock of a few dozen. But many of his members were suffering — their homes damaged, including roofs torn away, and their electricity off. There was little for him to do but try to reach out to them on their cellphones. “As a church,” Mr. McDowell said, “we’re praying for each other. ” Catherine Howden, a spokeswoman for Georgia’s emergency management agency, said 14 people had died and 23 had been injured in central and southern parts of the state. She said there had been up to 20 reports of tornadoes. Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency on Sunday for seven counties: Atkinson, Berrien, Brooks, Colquitt, Cook, Lowndes and Thomas. “The state is making all resources available to the impacted areas,” Mr. Deal said in a statement. He added that he was prepared to expand or extend the emergency declaration, and that he was likely to seek federal help. On Sunday afternoon, during a ceremony to swear in senior White House staff members, President Trump said he had spoken with Mr. Deal, and noted that Florida and Alabama had also been hit. Mr. Trump said he had expressed to Mr. Deal “our sincere condolences for the lives taken” and promised to help Georgia. He added that he planned to reach out to Florida’s governor, Rick Scott. George Wetzel, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Peachtree City, Ga. said that in the past three days, a strong system had moved east across the South, which had been unseasonably warm, with moisture moving north from the Gulf of Mexico. A statement from Mississippi’s emergency agency said a tornado had caused extensive damage in the southern part of the state early Saturday, killing at least four people in or near Hattiesburg and injuring more than 20 others. Gov. Phil Bryant called for a state of emergency as power lines and debris littered roads. In Georgia, an intense round of thunderstorms that started Saturday morning produced a number of tornadoes, and a second round overnight produced flooding rains, including more than six inches in 24 hours just east of Albany. A third wave of storms began in some parts of the state early Sunday. On Sunday morning in Adel, Ga. Jeff Lane, a county commissioner, surveyed the wreckage at the Sunshine Acres trailer park, where he said all of the county’s deaths had occurred. (He said eight had died, but Ms. Howden said later that the toll was actually seven.) Search and rescue crews were still making their way through the community. Photographs showed an open field surrounded by thin trees, strewn with splintered wood, metal sheeting and destroyed cars. “It’s like a bomb had been dropped out here at ground level,” Mr. Lane said by phone. “You’ve got frames that look like spaghetti noodles. We’ve tried to evacuate as many as we can. But it’s raining real hard, and we’re getting ready to start another round of storms. ” Mr. McDowell, the pastor in Barney, a small community known for its peaches, said he had canceled Sunday services because of power failures and the continuing storms. “A lot of my people have physical damage,” he said. “Some of the roofs are ripped off, trees are down, and of course the power is off now. ” The weather also caused damage in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, but it was not clear Sunday whether anyone had been killed or injured in those states. NOAA warned of a “high risk” of severe weather in Georgia and parts of Alabama and Florida. Since Saturday morning, 30 tornadoes were reported in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, the agency said. | 1 |
James O’Keefe joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM hosts Alex Marlow and Raheem Kassam on Wednesday to discuss Project Veritas’ latest undercover video investigation that revealed protesters’ plans to disrupt the inauguration of Donald Trump. [As Breitbart News reported: James O’Keefe and Project Veritas released a new undercover video on Tuesday showing activists with the “DisruptJ20” effort plotting to stop Donald Trump’s inauguration by chaining D. C. Metro trains and blocking roads. The video adds a layer of deep detail to a story by Ryan Lovelace in the Washington Examiner earlier this month, “How protesters plan to wreck Donald Trump’s inauguration,” which first reported the efforts of “#DisruptJ20. ” One activist leader is captured on the Project Veritas video saying: “So simultaneous to the checkpoint blockades in the morning, we are also doing a series of clusterfuck blockades, where we are going to try to blockade all the major ingress points into the city. ” As far as others on the Left disavowing the alleged plan, said O’Keefe, “We embedded this video compilation of the best terrorism bits, and we tagged Michael Moore,” along with Van Jones, George Soros’ deputies, Mark Ruffalo, and others. There was no indication that any of them disavowed any of it. The panel went on to discuss the media’s refusal to hold the Left accountable by calling on them to denounce these groups, as they are quick to do with the Right. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
Russia A screen grab from footage published by Ruptly on October 26, 2016 shows the launch of Russia’s Veliky Novgorod super-stealth diesel-electric submarine.
Russia has launched the latest addition to its series of super-stealth diesel-electric submarines, the Veliky Novgorod, which sports advanced stealth technologies and increased combat range.
The latest addition to the Black Sea Fleet is capable of striking land, sea and underwater targets and was officially launched from St. Petersburg’s Admiralty Shipyard on Wednesday in the presence of Russian Navy Deputy Commander Vice-Admiral Aleksandr Fedotenkov, and Admiralty Shipyard CEO Alexander Buzakov.
Earlier this month, Buzakov had said that another Varshavyanka-class submarine, the Kolpino, would be launched in November. A screen grab from footage published by Ruptly on October 26, 2016 shows the launch of Russia’s Veliky Novgorod super-stealth diesel-electric submarine.
“The state tests of the fifth [Varshavyanka-class] submarine, the Veliky Novgorod, were successfully completed and on October 25 it will be handed over to the Black Sea Fleet. The transfer of the sixth submarine, the Kolpino, is underway, scheduled to be completed on November 25," he said.
The submarines, which are designed for anti-ship and anti-submarine operations in mid- depth waters, are capable of holding a crew of 52, have a top underwater speed of 20 knots and a cruising range of 400 miles. They can stay submerged for 45 days and are armed with 18 torpedoes and eight surface-to-air projectiles.
Part of Russia’s Black Sea fleet is engaged in the battle against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in Syria, which has been hit by deadly militancy it blames on some Western states and their regional allies. Loading ... | 0 |
China repeatedly hacked US, stole data on nukes, FBI & war plans 10/31/2016
RUSSIA TODAY Chinese intelligence repeatedly targeted US national security agencies and email accounts of US officials, a soon-to-be-released report says, adding that Beijing spies targeted info on nuclear weapons, FBI investigations and war plans.
“Chinese intelligence has repeatedly infiltrated US national security entities and extracted information with serious consequences for US national security, including information on the plans and operations of US military forces and the designs of US weapons and weapons systems,” a draft annual report for 2016 said, as cited by the Washington Free Beacon.
The final version of the report of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission is to be released November 16.
The hacks allowed Beijing to gain “insight into the operation of US platforms and the operational approaches of US forces to potential contingencies in the region,” it goes on.
According to the document, China applied efforts at “cyber and human infiltration” of national security sectors, including the FBI and the US Pacific Command. The report says that Washington “faces a large and growing threat to its national security from Chinese intelligence collection operations.”
Chinese spies reportedly hacked into secret US war plans, gaining information about nuclear weapons, and snooping into electrical power grids and financial networks. US Diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial sectors have also been the targets of China.
“US critical infrastructure entities are a major target of Chinese cyber operations, and China is capable of significantly disrupting or damaging these entities,” the report said.
The Chinese allegedly hacked into secret data of the MQ-9 Reaper drone, which has been a staple of US airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past 9 years.
US academics who work for the groups involved in China studies have also been reportedly targeted by Beijing. The document names an American student in China, Glenn Duffie Shriver, as a target. Shriver was convicted of conspiracy to spy for China in 2010. He was released in 2013.
Obama administration officials have not escaped China’s alleged digital predation.
“Among the information extracted were 5.6 million fingerprints, some of which could be used to identify undercover US government agents or to create duplicates of biometric data to obtain access to classified areas,” the report said.
Several organizations allegedly contribute to China’s intelligence operations, including the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and Communist Party military, as well as the PLA General Political Department and the Party’s United Front Work Department. | 0 |
Merkel: Worried about Islamisation? Just Sing Christmas Carols Merkel: Worried about Islamisation? Just Sing Christmas Carols By 0 19
Angela Merkel has recommended that Germans who are concerned about Islamisation should play Christmas carols on the recorder to contain any possible threat.
At a national congress of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in Wittenburg the German Chancellor told supporters that it’s up to them to hold off the growth of Islam in Germany, by preserving Christmas traditions.
Addressing points raised by the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party about Islamic law holding values that are antithetical to those of Germans, Merkel conceded: “I know that there are concerns about Islam.”
The CDU politician argued that it’s up to Germans to contain Islamisation in Germany, suggesting they do so by recalling Christian traditions. “How many Christmas carols do we still know? And how many of them are we passing on to our children and grandchildren?” she asked the crowd, rhetorically.
Merkel added: “You just have to copy a few [sheets of carol music], and ask someone who can play the recorder or the flute [to join in]”.
Met with some laughter at her suggestion that a woodwind rendition of Christmas songs could pose a challenge to Islamisation, the Chancellor insisted : “Yes I’m being serious. Otherwise, we will lose a piece of our homeland.”
Merkel’s suggestions were met with scepticism from AfD Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Beatrix von Storch, who co-leads the Eurosceptic party.
“Yes, I think it’s an excellent idea and it’s nice when… | 0 |
A massive landslide in California’s Big Sur has closed a portion of scenic Highway 1, further isolating that region from the rest of the state and dealing a massive blow to tourism in the area. [Another major slide this weekend on #Hwy1 #BigSur at Mud Creek (PM 9). Road remains closed but partial coastal access via Rd. pic. twitter. — Caltrans District 5 (@CaltransD5) May 22, 2017, The Los Angeles Times reports: “With a loud boom and a cloud of dust, part of a mountainside slid into the Pacific Ocean on Saturday night, swallowing roughly a third of a mile of Highway 1 and rearranging some more of Big Sur’s dramatic coastline. ” The landslide came after a series of smaller problems that affected the area after one of the rainiest winters in the history of the state. In March, a collapsed bridge in Big Sur cut many residents off from access to essential supplies and services, with access only available on foot or by helicopter. The dramatic California coastline is subject to frequent erosion, as its cliffs and mountains are generally made of loose layers of sedimentary rock. The Associated Press reports that the landslide “adds to a record $1 billion in highway damage from one of the state’s wettest winters in decades. ” There is no indication yet of how long it will take to repair Highway 1, whose scenic views are a major tourist draw to the area. Repairs must wait until the mountainside is stable again, and could take more than a year, given the engineering challenges of the road, and the logistical difficulties of construction in an isolated area. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO — The C. I. A. developed tools to spy on Mac computers by injecting software into the chips that control the computers’ fundamental operations, according to the latest cache of classified government documents published on Thursday by WikiLeaks. Apple said in a statement Thursday evening that its preliminary assessment of the leaked information indicated that the Mac vulnerabilities described in the disclosure were previously fixed in all Macs launched after 2013. However, the documents also indicated that the Central Intelligence Agency was developing a new version of one tool last year to work with current software. The leaked documents were the second batch recently released by WikiLeaks, which said it obtained a hoard of information on the agency’s cyberweapons programs from a former government worker or contractor. The first group of documents, published March 7, suggested that the C. I. A. had found ways to hack Apple iPhones and Android smartphones, Microsoft Windows computers, Cisco routers and Samsung smart televisions. Since the initial release of the C. I. A. documents, which the agency has not confirmed are authentic, major technology companies have been scrambling to assess whether the security holes exploited by the C. I. A. still exist and to patch them if they do. All of the surveillance tools that have been disclosed were designed to be installed on individual phones or computers. But the effects could be much wider. Cisco Systems, for example, warned customers this week that many of its popular routers, the backbone of computer networks, could be hacked using the C. I. A. ’s techniques. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has offered to share the precise software code used by the C. I. A. ’s cyberweapons with the affected companies. But major tech companies have been reluctant to directly engage with him for fear of violating American laws governing the receipt of classified information. At a news conference Thursday, Mr. Assange criticized the government policies that restricted such communications but said that Apple had nonetheless been willing to work with representatives of his organization. Google and Microsoft, he said, had simply pointed WikiLeaks to its existing channels for anyone to report a security flaw. In its statement, Apple denied negotiating with WikiLeaks. “We have given them instructions to submit any information they wish through our normal process under our standard terms,” the company said. “Thus far, we have not received any information from them that isn’t in the public domain. We are tireless defenders of our users’ security and privacy, but we do not condone theft or coordinate with those that threaten to harm our users. ” The spy software described in the latest documents was designed to be injected into a Mac’s firmware, a type of software preloaded in the computer’s chips. It would then act as a “listening post,” broadcasting the user’s activities to the C. I. A. whenever the machine was connected to the internet. A similar tool called NightSkies was developed in 2009 to spy on iPhones, the documents said, with the agency figuring out how to install it undetected before a new phone was turned on for the first time. (Apple said that flaw affected only the iPhone 3G and was fixed in all later models.) Although most of the tools targeted outdated versions of the Apple devices’ software, the C. I. A. ’s general approach raises new security concerns for the industry, said Eric Ahlm, who studies cybersecurity at Gartner, a research firm. By rewriting the most basic software of a computer or a phone, tools that operate at the chip level can hide their existence and avoid being wiped out by routine software updates. Under an agreement struck during the Obama administration, intelligence agencies were supposed to share their knowledge of most security vulnerabilities with tech companies so they could be fixed. The C. I. A. documents suggest that some key vulnerabilities were kept secret for the government’s use. The C. I. A. declined to comment Thursday, pointing reporters to its earlier statement about the leaks, in which it defended its use of “innovative, ” techniques to protect the country from foreign threats and criticized WikiLeaks for sharing information that could help the country’s enemies. | 1 |
Robert Osborne, a onetime actor who turned his lifelong love of old films into a starring role as the marquee host of Turner Classic Movies, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84. David Staller, a longtime friend, confirmed the death. For the last 23 years, the Mr. Osborne brought a sophisticated, gentlemanly air to TCM, where he turned his familiarity with films, their back stories and their stars into absorbing intros, outros and interviews. He typically introduced 18 movies a week, as well as marathons and special presentations, that provided an escape into a golden age when Fred and Ginger were dancing, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman ruled and Marlon Brando was transforming acting. And, it turned out, his presence and storytelling helped turn TCM into a prime destination for movie buffs. “I get stopped on the street all the time,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2014. “People say: ‘You got me through cancer last year. You got me past unemployment. You take me away from my troubles.’ Exactly what movies did in the ’30s and ’40s. ” Mr. Osborne appealed as much to moviemakers as he did to moviegoers. In a statement, Steven Spielberg said, “He got us excited and reawakened to the greatest stories ever told with the most charismatic stars in the world. ” Mr. Osborne was a fan and historian with a special fondness for leading ladies like Olivia de Havilland, Gene Tierney, Kim Novak, Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis, some of whom became his friends. “I love those people,” he told “CBS Sunday Morning” last year. “They were so interesting to be around. These were people that once ruled the world. ” Ben Mankiewicz, another host on TCM, said he had witnessed the affection that actresses like Debbie Reynolds, Eva Marie Saint, Cher and Liza Minnelli showed Mr. Osborne. “There was a trust between them,” he said in a telephone interview. “You spend 20 seconds with Robert, you know you could trust him. They knew that he appreciated the legacy they were part of. They could let their guard down. He was the exact right caretaker of these movies that mean so much to so many people. ” But, Mr. Mankiewicz added, “He’d talk to you as much about Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Power and Cary Grant. ” In his West Side apartment at — yes, the Osborne — he kept a memorabilia collection that included a pincushion from one of Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday parties ashtrays from show business landmarks like the Brown Derby in Hollywood and the Stork Club in New York two Golden Globe awards and the statuette used in the awards ceremony scene in “All About Eve,” which Ms. Davis gave him as a gift. Robert Jolin Osborne Jr. was born on May 3, 1932, in Colfax, Wash. His father was a high school principal and coach his mother, the former Hazel Jolin, was a homemaker. Robert discovered his love of Hollywood when, in 1941, his mother brought him a copy of Modern Screen magazine with Lana Turner on the cover. He became so engrossed that he began jotting down, in a notebook, the details of every movie he could find — a kind of human precursor to the Internet Movie Database. His love of movies led to his working as a young man at the Rose and Roxy Theaters in Colfax. (He later invested in another Rose Theater, in Port Townsend, Wash. which was renovated in the 1990s.) He studied journalism at the University of Washington and started acting after graduation, working for 20th Century Fox and for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Productions. His screen credits were modest: uncredited roles (one in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”) and a guest appearance on the 1960s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies. ” Ms. Ball liked him and encouraged him to give up acting to write about Hollywood. And former stars in particular — untethered from the studio system, rarely working and often forgotten — welcomed him. “They were cut off like people on a desert island,” he told The Times. “Paulette Goddard, I got to know. Hedy Lamarr, I got to know really well. Nobody gave a damn about Hedy Lamarr back then. ” His book, “Academy Awards Illustrated” (1965) with an introduction by Ms. Davis, led to his becoming a critic and columnist at The Hollywood Reporter. His television appearances led to his being hired as a host on The Movie Channel before he moved to TCM in 1994. Mr. Osborne’s love of movies led him to invest in the Rose Theater in Port Townsend and he became instrumental in the growth of its film festival, now entering its 18th year. “With his connections, he brought us Eva Marie Saint and other stars,” said Rocky Friedman, the majority owner of the Rose Theater there. “They’d come and do interviews with Robert — and he was so gracious with the public. ” Mr. Osborne left no immediate family survivors. Mr. Friedman said he saw Mr. Osborne last month in Manhattan. “He was just Robert, with countless stories about Hollywood,” he said. “And he told me something I had never known. That every Sunday for 40 years, he has spoken to Olivia de Havilland. ” | 1 |
Tim Farron, leader of the left wing Liberal Democrats, has been branded a “bigot” by celebrities and angry social media users after refusing to say gay sex is not a sin. [In an interview with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman on Tuesday night, the presenter asked: “A while back I asked you if you thought that homosexuality was a sin and you struggled to answer. “Now you’ve had a while to consider that question, what is the answer?” Mr. Farron, who is an observant member of the Church of England, responded: “I don’t think I struggled to answer it at all, Cathy. I think I’m not in the position to make theological announcements over the next six weeks. “I’m not going to spend my time talking theology or making pronouncements. ” The presenter then reminded him that in a 2015 interview she asked him three times if he thought homosexuality was a sin and he responded: “We’re all sinners. ” She asked him if this was still the answer. “As a Liberal, I’m passionate about equality, about equal marriage and about equal rights for LGBT people, for fighting for LGBT rights, not just in this country but overseas,” he responded. “Just because I’m Christian, it would be a bit boring for everybody to spend the next weeks asking me to make theological announcements that I’m not going to make. ” His response was not good enough for some, however. TV presenter Sue Perkins tweeted: “Tim Farron on C4 news failing to clarify his views on the gay community. ‘We’re all sinners’. It’s 2017. ” Tim Farron on C4 news failing to clarify his views on the gay community. ’We’re all sinners’. It’s 2017. — Sue Perkins (@sueperkins) April 18, 2017, Meanwhile, comedian David Baddiel even branded Mr. Farron a “fundamentalist Christian homophobe” with fellow comedian David Walliams adding: “Mr @timfarron you are definitely a sinner for your continued intolerance prejudice. Please try and join the rest of us in the year 2017. ” Problem with people saying it’s Tim Farron who’s talking the most sense is: he’s a fundamentalist Christian homophobe. #notsurehowwegothere, — David Baddiel (@Baddiel) April 18, 2017, Mr @timfarron you are definitely a sinner for your continued intolerance prejudice. Please try and join the rest of us in the year 2017. — David Walliams (@davidwalliams) April 18, 2017, Tim Farron joined nine other Liberal Democrat MPs in abstaining in the vote on gay marriage in 2013. However, he said his abstention did not mean he opposed it. | 1 |
baldegar | 0 |
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is permanently relocating more agents to Chicago in the wake of the city’s nearly 800 homicides in 2016 and the upward trend in violence during January 2017. [The new agents will be part of the “Chicago Crime Guns Strike Force. ” According to CNN, “ATF headquarters in Washington sent out a bulletin to field offices around the country Wednesday looking for agents to volunteer for permanent transfer to the Chicago area. ” An unidentified official said “it’s unusual to ask for permanent relocation in reaction to a specific problem. ” Normal practice is for the agency to request a surge of agents “for 30 to 60 days. ” January 2017 saw a surge in shootings and violence that easily surpassed the violence witnessed in January 2016. According to the Chicago Tribune, “At least 228 people were shot in Chicago [January 1 through January 22, 2017]. ” That was an increase of 16 victims above the number shot during the same period in 2016. And there were “at least 42 homicides,” marking a “23. 5 percent … [increase from] the 34 homicides from the same period in 2016. ” President Trump reacted to this surge in violence by tweeting: If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ”carnage” going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016) I will send in the Feds! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017, CNN spoke to two ATF officials about the additional federal agents heading to Chicago. One said the new surge “is not in response” to Trump’s tweet and the second official “could not say for sure that Trump’s comment had nothing to do with decision. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
0 WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 10: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks while meeting with President-elect Donald Trump (L) following a meeting in the Oval Office November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. Trump is scheduled to meet with members of the Republican leadership in Congress later today on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
This story by Paris Swade .
President Obama said that he is “very encouraged” by the interest that Trump has with working with his team.
What Obama said today is going to drive liberals up the wall. He said that him and Trump had an “excellent” conversation.
*** We have the best President-elect don’t we folks! President Obama says he had an "excellent conversation with President-elect Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/GsTP68D8wh
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 10, 2016
This is a good sign. We need to make America great again by working with the other side. We need to come together. Trump and Obama spent 90 minutes talking when they had only planned for 15 minutes. President Obama says he's "very encouraged" by the interest of President-elect Trump wanting to work with his team. pic.twitter.com/Hu46ZbYrLx
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 10, 2016
*** What a historic moment in U.S. history! President-elect Trump: "I very much look forward to dealing with [President Obama] in the future, including counsel." pic.twitter.com/8a0n7beQQs
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 10, 2016
Look at What Donald Trump has already accomplished. He has started the peace process with Russia and Israel .
The best part is that they both report to have had an “ excellent ” conversation with Trump.
*** Share this article if you can’t wait to see Trump in the White House, y’all!
What an amazing time to be alive. | 0 |
notice that no one harmed the Muslims praying in Jewish structures | 0 |
Thursday in London at Advertising Week Europe 2017 during an interview with Empire Terri White, former Al Gore said climate change was a “principal” cause of the Syrian Civil War and Brexit. Gore said, “I was just in the Persian Gulf region and the scientists for the lat couple of years, one of the lines of investigation they have been pursuing has led them to the conclusion that significant areas of the Middle East and North Africa are in danger of becoming uninhabitable. And, just a taste of this, to link it to some of the events that the UK and the European Union are going through and I know that’s another source of stress because we are now on the eve next week of the Brexit process — but think for a moment about what happened in Syria. You know we look at the gates of hell opening, they long since have opened, but before the gates of hell opened in Syria, what happened was a extreme drought. ” “The scientists have published these peer review studies for several years now showing exactly why it’s related to the climate crisis. From 2006 to 2010, 60 percent of the farms in Syria were destroyed and had to be abandoned and 80 per cent of the livestock were killed. The drought in the eastern Mediterranean is the worst ever on record — the records only go back 900 years, but it’s historic. And 1. 5 million climate refugees were driven into the cities in Syria, where they collided with refugees from the Iraq War. And Wikileaks revealed the internal conversations in the Syrian government where they were saying to one another ‘we can’t handle this, there’s going to be a social explosion’. There are other causes of the Syrian civil war, but this was the principal one. And those in the region recognize that. And it has unleashed, with other factors an incredible flow of refugees into Europe which is creating political instability in Europe and which contributed in some ways to the desire of some in the UK to say ‘Whoa we’re not sure we want to be a part of that anymore.’ And you can go through the list of countries around the worlds where stability and political success of governance is really challenged. Some countries have a hard time even in the best of seasons but the additional stress this climate crisis is causing really poses the threat of some political disruption and chaos of a kind the world would find extremely difficult to deal with. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Mystery of the screaming mummy # akajsaid 0
Desde el principio del mundo, hemos estado rodeados de misterios. Algunos son resueltos por la ciencia, pero otros siguen sin explicación y podrían quedarse sin resolver para siempre. Algunos son tan antiguo como la humanidad, pero nuestra fascinación con ellos los mantiene sin tiempo. Los turistas que viajan a lugares de interés turístico y los destinos espeluznantes todos los años, la esperanza de una visión más profunda de las estructuras misteriosos y lo que ocurrió dentro de sus miles de perímetro de hace años. En el siguiente artículo nos hemos reunido una lista de lo que creemos ser los misterios sin resolver más extraños y desconcertantes.
Depuis le commencement du monde, nous avons été entourés de mystères. Certains sont résolus par la science, mais d'autres restent inexpliquées et pourraient rester en suspens pour toujours. Certains sont aussi vieux que l'humanité, mais notre fascination avec eux les maintient hors du temps. Les touristes se rendent à des sites célèbres et destinations fantasmagoriques chaque année, dans l'espoir d'une compréhension plus profonde des structures mystérieuses et ce qui est arrivé au sein de leurs milliers de périmètre il y a des années. Dans l'article suivant, nous avons rassemblé une liste de ce que nous croyons être mystères non résolus les plus étranges et déroutants. Tags | 0 |
Do you really like sexy women like the one in the photo above? Are you sure? Big Brother Google says “Why don’t you look at this story about alternative lifestyles about men who have realized what terrible misogynists they are for having sexual desires?” rather than searching for articles on for pick-up artistry .
Sooner rather than later, all Internet roads will lead to the same New World Order Socialist philosophy.
As profiling of Internet users becomes more prolific and the algorithms more sophisticated in the coming years, the news and information we search for will be tailored to slowly “nudge” us one way or the other politically, one small step at a time.
The management of the information we get to read is already in its infancy.
Why do you think that “free” app on your phone that only performs a few functions swells in size with each “update” that is released? Do you really think they give a damn about your privacy and are plugging security holes? Hell no. The apps we download are moving from useful, low-resource using services to resource hogs (necessitating an upgrade in processing power every year or two) because they only provide us with a “free” service in order to hook us so the apps can gather information about everything we’ve ever written on our devices for social engineers and marketing flacks. The apps are becoming more sophisticated in the way they monitor everything we do – which is why the apps need all that memory size.
And soon, apps will be gathering information about everything we’ve ever said aloud by using the built in microphones on each device and speech recognition technology. CIA agents confirm microphones can easily be activated even when a device is switched completely off.
This type of information will be collected in giant databases such as the Utah Data Center, with the ultimate goal being the corporate-government complex knowing more about us than we know about ourselves.
Big Brother Was So Yesterday Orwell’s Big Brother idea never could have imagined the insidious nature of today’s information technology
Today’s information technology has put Big Brother on steroids.
The Waking Times details this frightful world that is already emerging as anyone who pays attention knows search engines are already tailoring information to what we search for and even what we text people about.
“Mr. X, we’ve studied the little virtual bubble you live in, and now we can sell you your own special brand of truth.”
Most of the time, the information one will see in this Internet bubble will be customized to suit a person’s interests. This is why Facebook relentlessly pushes the “Like a page or product” portion of its web site. This information is used to build a profile of a person that ultimately will be able to accurately predict the color of their next bowel movement.
If a man is interested in non-GMO foods advertising and “news” stories will be tailored to inform him of grocers who sell organics and about news from “approved” outlets with stories written on the topic. Most of the time, this will be insidious advertising and ads disguised as information.
“Hello, audience. We’re going to pitch you on becoming full-fledged obsessed consumers, as if there is no other worthy goal in life—and then we’re going to profile you from top to bottom, to find out exactly what kind of obsessed consumer you are, so we can hit you and trigger you with information that uniquely stimulates your adrenal glands…”
The Utah Data Center is designed to store exabytes of information on “all forms of communication, including emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all types of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, and bookstore purchases”
As another example: Okay, we know you are interested in traditional gender roles. We ( the information managers like Facebook and Google) will now to find news stories and customize the information you get to read online in order to cause you to doubt the validity of your beliefs. The ultimate goal is to slowly but steadily move you away from believing in traditional gender roles to believing in militant feminism without you realizing what we have done.
This type of information management is even more insidious than outright censorship, as it will be designed to steer everyone towards what the controllers of society want us to think and buy, no matter how far from the ideal consumer and fellow traveler we may be.
Think of it as a game of Plinko on The Price is Right, in which all chips ultimately fall into the “perfect, braindead consumer” slot at the bottom of the maze. The social engineers’ dream is a world of nothing but sexless consumers who perform mindless work in meaningless jobs, whose only outlets for pleasure are shopping and eating out and other State-approved activities.
Think that’s hyperbole? Travel around the world for six months to a year, then come back to the United States and tell me what you think.
Little Information Bubbles Merge Into Big Information Bubbles We become what we are repeatedly exposed to, which is why a war is on for your mind
Once we have you believing a certain way or questioning your established beliefs, the key comes when it is time to steer public perception one way or the other. This is where the “rubber meets the road” in the realm of managing the populace like so many sheeple.
BUT when a Big One comes along, like the 2016 national election in the US, the separate tunes come together and ring as one. Then the overriding need to extend Globalism’s goals (in the person of Hillary Clinton) blot out every other priority. Then the major media twist whatever they need to twist. Then it’s the same bubble for everyone.
Soon, just like the mainstream media on television and in print, everything you see online will be directed at making you think, behave and vote a certain way. The micromanagement and control of information just hasn’t become that sophisticated – yet.
Obama already hinted that only “official” information should be linked up by the corporate interests of Facebook, Google, etc. Look for Hillary to implement that idea with an iron fist if she is whisked into the Oval Office . An Internet security “crisis” will likely be engineered in the near future in which—you guessed it—Big Daddy Government needs to step in and take control of the web. From there on out we will be back to corporate-government propaganda instead of the Libertarian’s dream the current iteration of the Internet is.
So, the awakening we have seen from the brainwashing of the corporate media will be a temporary one if the elite have anything to do with it. The groundwork of this new, Socialist system of micromanaging information is already being laid. You already see it every time you do a search.
Someday soon the only information we’ll be able to find online will be from sources the corporate-government complex approves of. Of course, there will be renegades and rebels like us who resist, but most of the braindead sheeple out there will go along to get along just as has been happening since time immemorial.
Our options will be to get off the grid or to move to a new Internet. Neither move will be peacefully tolerated by the powers that be.
Read More: Are Sweatshops Coming To America?
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DENHAM SPRINGS, La. — Kathryn Morgan, 18, stood on the shore of the neighborhood, waiting for a boat and taking stock. Home, truck, school, workplace, her friends’ homes: all gone, flooded out. There was less certainty about the fate of her dog, left days ago with some food in a portable kennel. Or the bassinet and piles of baby clothes left behind when she and her daughter, Charlie, were picked up in a boat and taken to the safe and dry second story of her godmother’s home. “It’s Louisiana, we always expect the ditches to fill when it rains,” said Ms. Morgan, who was returning from the first supply run in three days. This was not just the ditches. “It’s like a hurricane,” she said. “But without any warning. ” As the receding floodwaters continued to expose the magnitude of the disaster the state has been enduring, Louisiana officials said Tuesday that at least 11 people had died, and that about 30, 000 people had been rescued. Gov. John Bel Edwards acknowledged that the state did not know how many people were missing, but he said that nearly 8, 100 people had slept in shelters on Monday night and that some 40, 000 homes had been “impacted to varying degrees. ” “We are still very much in an emergency, response mode for much of the Florida parishes,” Mr. Edwards said, referring to an area east of the Mississippi River. “Saving life is the most important priority that we have. We’re going to dedicate every available response to that effort until it’s no longer required. ” In Louisiana, severe weather can often seem a trauma visited and revisited. But the disaster unfolding here this week fits into a recent and staggering pattern in more than states, where floods have rolled out at such a scale that scientists say they might be a occurrence. The cumulative, increasingly grim toll, from Maryland to South Carolina to Louisiana to Texas, includes scores of lives and billions of dollars in economic losses. Everywhere the same refrain — that it has never happened like this — has given rise to the same question: How should communities and families plan for deluges that are theoretically uncommon but now seem to play out with appalling regularity? “We’ve clearly had a rash of these things in the last year in the last 12 months, it’s just been incredible,” said Barry D. Keim, Louisiana’s state climatologist. “We’re learning a lot, but, unfortunately, it’s flooding a lot of people and causing a lot of problems. ” In Livingston Parish, which recorded more than 25 inches of rain in three days, unearthed coffins floated down main streets, and elementary schools became islands of shelter. The parish president’s house was flooded out, even though the house was not located in the federally designated flood zone when he moved into it — two weeks ago. “Grab what you can and get out,” is what the president, Layton Ricks, recalled a man telling him as he stood in the deepening lake of his driveway on Friday night. “This is going under. ” In an interview at the parish government building, Mr. Ricks played down his troubles, talking instead, between catches in his voice, of the staggering challenges faced by the poor and newly homeless of his parish. “What do they do?” he said, asking for them as much as for himself as the parish’s chief executive. “It’s ungodly what happened. ” After the interview, Mr. Ricks walked down the hallway to a small gathering of senior state and parish law enforcement officials. They hugged, and some wept. Just to the west in Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital, federal and state officials also grappled Tuesday with how to manage the fallout from the unnamed storm system that experts said carried enough precipitation to rival a hurricane. The administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, described the situation in Louisiana as “a very large disaster,” and the East Baton Rouge Parish authorities imposed a curfew from 10 p. m. to 6 a. m. Residents of 20 parishes are already eligible for federal disaster assistance. As Louisiana on Tuesday faced its second catastrophic flood in about five months, climate scientists elsewhere cautioned that the state was unlikely to be the last to confront a disaster like this one. “There’s definitely an increase in heavy rainfall due to climate change,” said John the state climatologist in Texas. “The actual increase from place to place is going to be variable because of the randomness of the weather. Some places will see a dramatic change. ” The blend of climate change and development in new areas has led to particularly dire flooding in places where systems were designed by people who were “assuming it was always going to rain the same way as 40 years ago,” said J. Marshall Shepherd, a professor at the University of Georgia and a former president of the American Meteorological Society. Despite years of warnings, and long histories of planning for emergencies, officials in saturated cities and counties have often found themselves responding to far graver challenges than they imagined. A strategy for a flash flood that comes and goes within hours can hardly keep pace when record rains fall, and plans for action are often refined on the fly. “We had a template before this disaster even happened,” said Allan H. Kittleman, the county executive in Howard County, Md. which had severe flooding last month. “Of course, you have to tweak it. ” In Louisiana on Tuesday, the miseries varied by geography. In Ascension Parish, officials were still handing out sandbags and urging evacuations. In Baton Rouge, the chore for emergency workers was going door to door to find the unreported missing, injured or dead. In Livingston Parish, the task had changed from a frantic flight to safety to attempts at return that were expected to end in heartbreak. “It’s not an emergency now,” said David Truxillo, 51, who pulled up to a submerged road with his wife, both of them with pistols on their hips and both debating whether a truck could make it through the water at this height (it could not, they decided). “It’s trying to see what we got left,” his wife, Tina, said. Definitely not the beehives in the backyard, the motorcycles, the camper or the shed. Maybe not the house. In a subdivision across this slowly resurfacing town, a team of family and friends were helping drag everything out of Jim Bridges’s waterlogged house, to which he had finally returned on Tuesday afternoon. Chairs, a television, beds, books, a piano, all of it in a long pile, like a barricade stretching across the front lawn. “For us to flood, half of Denham would have to flood,” Mr. Bridges, 70, recalled telling a concerned new neighbor a few years ago. He sighed. “A lot more than half of Denham flooded. ” | 1 |
Elections 2016 , U.S.
Approximately two million bikers are planning to arrive in Washington, D.C. by January 20, 2017. The patriotic bikers are volunteering to attend President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration to enhance safety during the event.
The bikers have stated they want to thwart efforts by “libtards” to ruin the Donald Trump’s inauguration , Right Alerts Polls reports. Do you support their efforts to prevent the ceremony from erupting into chaos?
As previously reported, liberal activists have launched the “DisruptJ20” to hamper Trump’s swearing in by virtually any means possible. The Bikers for Trump Guardians of Our Republic group is willing to step in and offer protection to the millions of proud Americans planning to come to the capital to watch the 45th president of the United States be sworn into office.
“These libtards need to be shut the hell up. This is not only a biker event, but it is a Trump supporters event. We are many and varied, but we unite as one,” a statement from the bikers boldly states.
“Christian, Veterans, Bikers, Truckers, Steelworkers, Coal worker’s, Preachers, Fast food workers, all Colors on [sic] the human race,” began the notice from the bikers, who clearly wanted to be inclusive to all.
“If you are a working class American and you support Mr. President Donald Trump, then we would love to see you there. Our main objective is to show our love for our new president and unite as one in a collective effort in Solidarity Brotherhood and Unity. God Bless America,” the notice from the bikers continued.
Multiple anti-Trump protesters and related groups are planning to converge on the capital and coordinate their efforts to disrupt the swearing in ceremony. Approximately 30,000 protesters are expected to be in town on inauguration day.
Plans for the security and public safety efforts by the Bikers 4 Trump group are still evolving, according to the group’s Facebook page. The host of the event is the “2 Million Bikers 2 DC,” group – a part of the Bikers For Trump, Guardians of our Republic. Approximately Two Million Bikers Will Be DEFENDING Trump’s Inauguration Share this: | 0 |
Banana Republic Election in the United States? 07.11.2016 Print version Font Size Nothing is more hypocritical than to hear that the US government is going to send "election observers" to other countries. For nowhere on the planet are elections more easily rigged than in the United States of America. In "Votescam: The Stealing of America" (1992) the late Collier brothers summarized the alarming state of affairs, which still prevails today. In Chapter one, "Electronic Hoodwink", they begin by quoting the first words spoken by President-elect, George Bush in his Nov. 8, 1988 victory speech in Houston, Texas. Bush said: "We can now speak the most majestic words a democracy can offer: "The people have spoken . . . " The Colliers comment in the following brilliantly written passage: "It was not "the People" of the United States who did 'the speaking' on that election day, although most of them believed it was, and still believe it. In fact, the People did not speak at all. The voices most of us really heard that day were the voices of computers strong, loud, authoritative, unquestioned in their electronic finality . . . It only makes common sense that every gear, every mechanism, every nook and cranny of every part of the voting process ought to be in the sunlight, wide open to public view. How else can the public be reasonably assured that they are participating in an unrigged election where their vote actually means something? Yet one of the most mysterious, low-profile, covert, shadowy, questionable mechanisms of American democracy is the American vote count . . . Computers in voting machines are effectively immune from checking and rechecking. If they are fixed, you cannot know it, and you cannot be sure at all of an honest tally." In fact, according to the Nation Magazine article published in August, 2005, "How They Could Steal the Election This Time," by veteran reporter Ronnie Dugger, only four mega-election vendors, ES &S (Election Systems & Software), Hart, Diebold and Sequoia processed 96% of the USA vote on election night. Circa 2013, a company named Dominion acquired Diebold and Sequoia. Privately owned computer software And the processing of the nation's ballots are done, in 1988, in 2004, and in 2016, on secret, privately owned computer software which election officials in the USA agree by contract not to inspect. In other words, the vote in America is utterly unverifiable on these machines. America processes over eighty percent of the presidential vote on secret computer programs owned by only three mega-election vendors. This is at the very least an unholy concentration of power. If the three mega-vendors are working together behind the scenes, then it is the few that own this election software that selects the President. As Joseph Stalin said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." This issue of computerized election fraud simmered sub rosa from 1988 until August 1, 2016, when Donald Trump stated at a Columbus, Ohio Rally that he was afraid the "November election is going to be rigged against me." The nation's national press went into a frenzy. Jonathan Chait screeched in his headline for nymag.com, "Donald Trump, Discovering New Way to Undermine Democracy, Calls Election Rigged." In fact, it was NOT the raising of healthy questions by Trump that was undermining democracy. It was so-called reporters like Chait who didn't like anyone raising any concerns at all. On C-Span on August 21, 2016, best-selling author Roger Stone asserted that is was dangerous NOT to ask questions about how the vote was counted. After all, the Founding Fathers did encourage a healthy skepticism of government, including the part of the government that runs the elections. The situation in the United States is absurd. The fact that the public has no guarantee that the vote is actually that of the people is insane, and tears at the very fabric of democracy. Press concern is so grave about Trump's charge of a possibly rigged election, that in the last two of the three Presidential debates, NBC's Lester Holt and FOX's Chris Wallace both asked Trump if he would accept the election results. In the third debate, Trump stunned Wallace by saying he'd wait and see after he looked at the evidence, and that he was going to keep everyone in suspense. No way votes can be verified Three Supreme Court cases stated that the US voter's right to vote consisted of two parts: 1) the right to cast a ballot; and 2) the right to KNOW that one's ballot is counted accurately. With secret computer counts, there is simply no way to verify the vote. None. This is the first major election in America where the people are learning just how compromised the computer based vote has become. On October 18, 2016, computer expert Ethan Pepper appeared on the Sean Hannity radio show and noted that any election computer can be hacked; that if you get in you can switch a million votes as easy as switching one vote; and he also raised the question of WHO owns the election computer software by noting that George Soros was closely associated with those who provided 16 states with the Smartamatic voting machines. This highlights the greatest danger: that the election vendors themselves OWN the election software and that THEY are the prime suspects for rigging elections. After all, they don't have to hack in, they ARE in as the programmers of the software. And with local election officials signing contracts not to inspect the source code of the computer software, these same election vendors know that no one is looking over their shoulder. On October 26th, FOX Cable News discussed the computer voting machines in Texas that were caught by numerous voters switching their Trump vote to a Hillary vote in early election voting. This phenomenon also surfaced in Maryland. Trump has tweeted and facebooked his 21 million followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram about the computerized "vote-flipping" from Trump to Hillary in Texas. The issue of computerized election fraud was now planted in the public mind as a serious issue for the first time since election computers were introduced into the USA circa 1973. On October 31, 2016, the Drudge Report led with two links on how election computers were hacked. He linked to the new video by Bev Harris on youtube and on blackboxvoting.org entitled, "Fraction Magic." The Big TV Networks have been playing defense ever since. Rigging the election Every few hours one of the big Networks are running a story about how it would be almost "impossible" to rig a national election. But the networks had to report between airing these stories about a week ago that Ebay, Twitter, and the New York Times websites had been hacked, thus totally undermining their stories about the safety of election computers. The situation can be fixed in the USA, or prevented in other countries, by throwing the computer systems out altogether, and counting the paper ballots by hand, in public with all invited to observe, BEFORE the ballots leave the public sight. On November 5, 2016, FOX news carried commentary that whichever side wins in the Presidential race, the other will cry "computer votefraud." So the issue has finally become front and center in the Presidential campaign. Dr. David Dill of Stanford University is quoted in a 2004 Nation Magazine article, "How They Could Steal the Election This Time": "Why am I always being asked to prove these systems aren't secure? The burden of proof ought to be on the vendor. You ask about the hardware. 'Secret.' The software? 'Secret.' What's the cryptography? 'Can't tell you because that'll compromise the secrecy of the machines.'... Federal testing procedures? 'Secret'! Results of the tests? 'Secret'! Basically we are required to have blind faith." People of the USA act like citizens of Banana Republic Blind faith? That's what the subjects and slaves of Banana Republics and tin-horn dictatorships are reduced to. And that's what the people of the United States have now been reduced to since at least as far back as 1988, even though most Americans don't know it. 2016 has been a year of awakening on the election fraud issue. Will that awakening continue to grow so that the United States of America and all other nations? Will the United states and other nations replace easily-rigged election computers, and restore transparent, honest elections with hand-counted paper ballots at the neighborhood polling place once again? As it stands, there is absolutely no way to know who really won the upcoming presidential election in America. The power elite can rig their voting machines to whatever outcome they want. One of the ways the cabal in the United States can be stopped is by a verifiable vote where the America people can be assured they live in a democracy where their vote actually counts and that the will of the people is carried out in the elections. Nancy O'Brien Simpson Ms. Simpson was a radio personality in New York. She was a staff writer for The Liberty Report. A PBS documentary was done on her activism for human rights. She is a psychotherapist and political commentator. | 0 |
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Democratic Vice President Joe Biden wants American women to get back in the workforce to help boost the economy. “If we just put all the women back to work, if they were able to afford childcare, we would increase the GDP in America by close to eight tenths of one percent,” he said. “That’s trillions of dollars over the next decade.”
Biden made his remarks during a campaign event for Hillary Clinton at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. “The state of our economy could be characterized by a single word: pitiful,” he argued. “We’re still battling recession, I don’t care what the official stats are saying, America is still in recession. And we’re not doing anything about it.”
He added that it was “lazy American women” who brought about the downfall of the economy, because “they sit around on their behinds, doing nothing and squandering their days away when they could be improving the country that has given so much to them.” “I’m not sure how exactly we got to this point, but we’re here and we need to move. Like, yesterday,” he said.
“Mark my words and mark them well,” he addressed the crowd. “Hillary Clinton is the only one who can force American women to go to work. This is true because of a number of reasons. First, she’s a woman herself and not just any woman; she’s a self-made woman. So you better believe what she’s saying is true and has been tried and tested in practice plenty of times.”
“Second, Hillary Clinton understands how difficult it can be to give up the status of a free-loader when your husband is the bread-winner of the household and the wife is expected to tend to the house, the children, make sure dinner is served and always be in the mood for marital duties. She’s been all that and she’s learned how to break free from it, the hard way, I might add,” Biden continued.
“Today’s women are pampered and aren’t used to rolling up their sleeves and getting the job done on their own,” the vice president said. “They’re too dependent, too weak and too lazy to contribute to the economy. The reason for that is they’ve learned how to manipulate men by employing one of the most fundamental laws of economics: when a sought-after commodity becomes short in supply, the demand for it rises even higher.”
“Now, that’s all fine and dandy when it comes to their personal interests, but if you look at the big picture, it’s the economy that’s missing out on valuable workforce. And that’s why we need to get them off their lazy behinds and get them into their workplaces. And like I said, Hillary Clinton is the only one who can do it, which is what makes her the ideal candidate for the next President of the United States. We need to heal this country, folks, not run it into the ground even deeper,” Biden concluded. | 0 |
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While visiting a Chili’s restaurant in Cedar Hills, Texas, U.S. Army Veteran Ernest Walker was approached by the manager and had his military service questioned even though he had his military ID with him. Chili’s offers free meals to Veterans on Veterans Day as a thank you for their service, but what Walker received was anything but.
Noticing what was happening, Walker took out his phone and began to record everything that was being said to him. At one point, even his food was stripped away from him. There’s really no other way to see this than an act of racism, and Chili’s needs to answer for it.
Walker wrote on Facebook :
“I went there to get a Veterans meal and all was good. I had my service dog with me because I am on Dialysis and he monitors my BP. I ordered the waitress was wonderful. It took about 35 mins for meal to come. So when it attived I gave her a Tip as asjed for a take out. She said sure, at that point a old white guy wearing a Trump flag shirt walked buy me on hi way to the bath room. He came back and aked me what unit did i serve in the 24th. I said no the 25th. He said he was in world war 2 in Germany and we did not see people like you over there. They would no allow blacks. I just listened he left then came back to bathroom again and pet my dog. So waitress put foid in container. Then the managers comes and says a somes guest at the restaurant say that your not a real Soldier. I reply what are you serious what guest. The manager Wesly Patrick said can I see military ID. I felt that was reasonable I most people ask for that so I shoed him my ID it checked out. At that point all he should have said was ‘Sir I am sorry Thank you for your service and I would have left. But instead ge says ‘ tbe guest also says that your service dog is not a service dog. Now that’s when igot upset and started Recording so see for yourself what happened.”
Watch the altercation here:
Chili’s did respond by saying :
“We are aware of the situation that happened at our Chili’s Cedar Hills location yesterday. Our goal is to make every guest feel special. Unfortunately, we fell short on a day we strive to honor our Veterans and active military for their service. We have escalated this to the highest levels of our company.”
Hopefully, all of this will be resolved properly and Walker given the respect that he deserves.
The fact that some manager of a local Chili’s restaurant felt so bold to question anyone’s service to deny them a meal is just beyond comprehension.
Watch the story here via CBS DFW:
Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
comedian Kathy Griffin told a blogger President Donald Trump’s mockery of Megyn Kelly motivated her to take a shock photo of her holding the president’s severed head.[ blogger Yashar Ali tweeted he had spoken to Griffin on Tuesday after the gruesome image sparked a nationwide uproar. ( Shields) “She said they were putting together a Trump mask and that led her to think of Trump’s infamous statement early on in the primary,” Ali tweeted. “The ‘blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her ears, blood coming out of her wherever’ statement. ” 1. Just spoke with @kathygriffin . She said, unapologetically, that the image of her that’s gone viral is an expression of art, — Yashar Ali (@yashar) May 30, 2017, 2. She believes Trump is doing tremendous damage to the country + the world and she wanted the art to reflect the seriousness of his impact, — Yashar Ali (@yashar) May 30, 2017, 3. She said they were putting together a Trump mask and that led her to think of Trump’s infamous statement early on in the primary. — Yashar Ali (@yashar) May 30, 2017, 4. The ”blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her ears, blood coming out of her wherever” statement. — Yashar Ali (@yashar) May 30, 2017, 5. She also said she does not condone any violence, that provocative art should remain just that: art. She does not want life to imitate art, — Yashar Ali (@yashar) May 30, 2017, After Kelly opened the first GOP debate by pouncing on Trump for “[calling] women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals’ — and Trump interrupting her to say “Only Rosie O’Donnell” — Trump dismissed her as a “lightweight. ” “I think she’s highly overrated,” Trump told CNN’s Don Lemon in August 2015 after the first Republican primary debate. “She gets out, and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. And you know, you can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever, but she was, in my opinion, she was off base. ” Trump did not apologize and told CNN he did “nothing wrong whatsoever. ” TMZ originally obtained the image of Griffin holding up the president’s severed head from a shoot with photographer Tyler Shields. “This is fake blood, just so you know. I won’t give away what we’re doing, but Tyler and I are not afraid to do images that make noise,” she said on a video about the shoot. | 1 |
Watch: Aerial Footage Catches Man Stopping at a Drive Thru — While Being Chased By Police Home / Be The Change / Government Corruption / There Has To Be a Cheaper Way To Find The Worst People — 2016 Elections Will Cost Over $6 Billion There Has To Be a Cheaper Way To Find The Worst People — 2016 Elections Will Cost Over $6 Billion Claire Bernish October 30, 2016 2 Comments
This presidential election cycle has been nothing, if not a controversy-laden shit show of the bizarre — and a monumentally pricey one, at that. It’s now estimated the stupefying cost for the duopoly to provide us with two altogether unappealing candidates — possibly the least liked in American electoral history — as well as congressional minions, totals no less than $6.6 billion.
And that’s a conservative figure.
Despite nearly a century of anti-marijuana propaganda inundating schools, ads, and politics, in fact, legalizing cannabis has greater approval from the public than either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Yet, the two candidates, their respective political parties, outside groups, and individual donors will, all told, spend around 86.5 million inflation-adjusted dollars more than on the 2012 presidential election.
There simply must be a cheaper way to find two people no one wants to vote for.
Hell, Giant Meteor — the satirical no-party candidate whose slogan, “Just end it already,” speaks volumes to weariness — has amassed a sizeable following in recent months, as the public apparently abandons all pretense of hope.
To wit, 70 percent of voters likely to support Hillary Clinton, and a stunning 41 percent of all likely voters, would re-elect President Barack Obama if a third term were legal, Rasmussen reports.
So, if the public harbors only negligible fondness for Clinton and Trump, who deems them worthy of such colossal sums?
Unsurprisingly in both cases, it’s the elite — the billionaires and millionaires directly, indirectly, and sometimes shadily channeling their fortunes in hopes their chosen nominee will conform policy favorable to their interests from the helm of the White House.
OpenSecrets.org reports :
“Candidates and news outlets have decried the outsized influence of a small number of donors throughout the election season. Here’s a startling statistic: The top 100 families have given about 11.9 percent to the total $5.5 billion raised at this point, compared to 5.6 percent in all of 2012. Their names are familiar — Thomas and Kathryn Steyer have given $57.2 million to liberal causes, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson have doled out $47.3 million to GOP-allied forces, and Donald Sussman has so far provided $34.4 million to groups helping Democrats. Expect to see this list shift a bit: Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz pledged an additional $35 million to defeat Donald Trump earlier this month.”
Perhaps surprisingly to some, billionaire globalist and avid political influencer, George Soros, ranked only 9th in the list of top donors, contributing ‘just’ $17,689,038.
And this election cycle hasn’t been devoid of grassroots political donors, either, although their chosen ‘voice of the people’ candidate, Bernie Sanders, has since dropped out and endorsed Hillary Clinton — leaving a legacy of heartbroken, if not embittered, young voters scrambling for options — and an older, wiser generation hardly able to contain its I told you so’s .
OpenSecrets continues:
“The Obama re-election campaign floored campaign finance experts with his knack for tapping into the small donor pool — an impressive 32 percent of the campaign’s total funds came from people giving $200 or less in 2012. But Bernie Sanders topped that. More than half of his contributions, or 59 percent, came from small donors, totaling $134.6 million, which is about one and half times as much as Clinton and more than twice as much as Trump.”
Clearly, the so-called ‘little guy’ has nary the clout enjoyed by the privileged, moneyed class — and though that might be widely understood — the reminder dark horse candidates rarely make it to the big race seems more pronounced than ever in recent years.
As an Independent, Sanders’ decision to run on the Democratic ticket against the all-powerful Clinton, as a Democratic Socialist, no less, seemed fated to fail from the start — after all, groundbreaking though his bid was, a populist David vowing to disassemble the corporate, banking Goliath could never reap the billionaire financing to endure.
“In a campaign that has broken new ground in lots of ways, there’s at least one thing we can depend on, and that’s record-breaking spending on U.S. elections,” explained Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “While this campaign saw the rise of the small donor and a fall in spending reported by groups that hide their donors, overall, important trends hold true: More money is still coming from a tiny set of elite donors. It’s going to super PACs that are scarcely independent of the campaigns they support. And it’s targeting competitive races where the vote will be closest and the opportunity to have an impact, greatest.”
In effect, the elite doles out its fortunes on elite candidates who will best serve the elite’s interests — but, nah, take it from Hillary: the Russians might rig the election.
Money is proportionate to influence, it could justifiably be argued, and in an election cycle costing upwards of $7 billion, the overwhelming majority of us pull literally zero weight.
Finagling the popular vote constitutes little more than a distraction for the political heavyweights, whose insider connections and corporate and industry backers effectively usurped what little import the average American voter maintained when the Supreme Court ruled in their favor with the notorious corporations are people Citizens United decision in 2010.
Whatever vociferous contention Clinton and Trump might garner from an unusually alert populace this election season, don’t be fooled — the elite ultimately pull the strings — the vote is merely an illusory construct of a severely limited choice between two candidates of their choosing. Not ours.
All told, just remember the words of Mark Twain:
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” Share | 0 |
Archives Michael On Television Will Barack Obama Delay Or Suspend The Election If Hillary Is Forced Out By The New FBI Email Investigation? October 28th, 2016
Just when it looked like Hillary Clinton was poised to win the 2016 election , the FBI has thrown a gamechanger into the mix. On Friday, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency has discovered new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information that they had not previously seen. According to the Associated Press , the newly discovered emails “did not come from her private server”, but instead were found when the FBI started going through electronic devices that belonged to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI has been looking into messages of a sexual nature that Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, and that is why they originally seized those electronic devices. According to the Washington Post , the “emails were found on a computer used jointly by both Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry”, and according to some reports there may be “potentially thousands” of emails on the computer that the FBI did not have access to previously. Even though there are less than two weeks to go until election day, this scandal has the potential to possibly force Clinton out of the race, and if that happens could Barack Obama delay or suspend the election until a replacement candidate can be found?
Let’s take this one step at a time. On Friday, financial markets tanked when reports of these new Clinton emails hit the wires. The following comes from CNN …
After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
At this point, we do not know what is contained in these emails. But without a doubt Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton’s closest confidant, and I have always felt that she was Clinton’s Achilles heel. Journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) is fully convinced that the FBI would have never made this move unless something significant had already been discovered …
We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are…
Is it a certainty that we won’t learn before the election? I’m not sure it’s a certainty we won’t learn before the election.
One thing is, it’s possible that Hillary Clinton might want to on her own initiative talk to the FBI and find out what she can, and if she chooses to let the American people know what she thinks or knows is going on. People need to hear from her…
If the FBI has indeed found something explosive, would they actually charge her with a crime right before the election?
It is possible, but we also have to remember that government agencies (including the FBI) tend to move very, very slowly. If there are thousands of emails, it is going to take quite a while to sift through them all. And of course Barack Obama has lots of ways that he could influence, delay or even shut down the investigation.
So those that are counting on this to be the miracle that Donald Trump needs should not count their chickens before they hatch.
But if Hillary Clinton were to be forced out of the race by this FBI investigation, the Democrats would have to decide on a new candidate, and that would take time. The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that examined what would happen if one of the candidates was forced out of the race for some reason…
If Clinton were to fall off the ticket, Democratic National Committee members would gather to vote on a replacement. DNC members acted as superdelegates during this year’s primary and overwhelmingly backed Clinton over boat-rocking socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach says there currently are 445 committee members – a number that changes over time and is guided by the group’s bylaws, which give membership to specific officeholders and party leaders and hold 200 spots for selection by states, along with an optional 75 slots DNC members can choose to fill.
But the party rules for replacing a presidential nominee merely specify that a majority of members must be present at a special meeting called by the committee chairman. The meeting would follow procedures set by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and proxy voting would not be allowed.
It would be extremely challenging to get a majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee together on such short notice. If Clinton were to drop out next week, it would be almost impossible for this to happen before election day.
In such a scenario, Barack Obama may attempt to invoke his emergency powers . Since the election would not be “fair” until the Democrats have a new candidate, he could try to delay or suspend the election. There would be a lot of controversy as to whether this is legal or not, but Barack Obama has not let the U.S. Constitution stop him in the past.
Meanwhile, new poll numbers show that the Trump campaign was already gaining momentum even before this story about the new emails broke. According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post survey, Donald Trump is now only trailing Hillary Clinton by 4 points after trailing her by as much as 12 points last weekend.
And CNBC is reporting on a highly advanced artificial intelligence system that accurately predicted the outcomes of the presidential primaries and which is now indicating that Trump will be the winner in November…
An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House.
MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions.
The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democratic and Republican Primaries.
Without Hillary at the top of the ticket, the odds of a Trump victory would go way, way up.
So if Hillary is forced out of the race by this investigation, Barack Obama and the Democrats will want to delay or suspend the election for as long as possible if they can.
At this point there is probably not a high probability that such a scenario will play out, but in this crazy election year we have already seen that just about anything can happen. | 0 |
Murder squad. sgtkillgood
Every one of those F.B.I. pricks should face murder charges . That was a set up by the sheriff they were on the way to see . The F.B.I. already knew he was going to die . Premeditated murder from the agents all the way to the top man who came up with this idea . bdtwilson
Has to be more video state police have body cams.. 2nd What would a person that keeps his gun on his right hip have it on his left pocket? Curtrena Webster
same dumbasses crying for these criminals cheer when an unarmed teenage black kid is killed. Only one I feel sorry or is the girl, who obviously had no clue how seriously a game was being played. They were told to exit the vehicle and LaVoy chose to speed off. Sad that a life was lost for some fantasy world of wild wild west, but 2 yrs of playing nice by the Feds was enough. john smith
this last comment brought to you by the NDAA © Corum
You dumb cow you don’t know your ass from a hot rock. Yes there were wrongs on both sides if he had simply gotten out of the pickup he may still be alive but the simple fact is for many many years the federal government has and continues to over step it’s bounds they steal money land and freedom from us all at an alarming rate and every time someone stands up for them selves and there freedoms guess what here comes the jack booted thugs and shortly after there is another ” justified shooting” of a citizen who is just trying to defend there way of life . and as for your comment about the UN armed black kid go piss up a rope If you look at the majority of those cases the person shot did one of two thing they attacked the officer or charged the officer. But if you want to live in your coma of liberal guilt and perpetual blindness be my guest Charge61
The man was murdered in a pre-set trap. If he wanted to ram them he WOULD have, so saying he was driving a vehicle as a deadly weapon was a lie. They fired 3 shots before he swerved to avoid the trap. He exited with hands up and they executed him. Those on here defending the feds are coward scum who deserve the totalitarian regime you will be getting. Too cowardly to protect your freedoms, you make me sick by your ignorance. You WILL be next fedsuckers. And I will rejoice. COWARDS. Jeff Ex
Oh puhleze. Tarp man? Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed AND a home grown terrorist. Weak minded uneducated idiots are who support this cretin. Debbie Truitt Earley
By your comment, it’s obvious you are anti-God and anti-American. Your communist mindset is what’s wrong with America. That’s why we are no longer a free nation. Wake up, comatose weasel. Jeff Ex
Good lord, do people like you actually exist? How are people as stupid as you able to actually feed themselves? I’m anti stupid asshats like you, a hillbilly tart… Debra
What free country does this to peaceful unarmed protestors that are standing up for the rights of America…. It’s not the United States. We are NOT a free people. We are living under dictatorship! Wake up, America! Jeff Ex
This entire comment section has been taken over by people with an average IQ of 30. It’s sad to see what this country has come to, low information religious zealots and ammo sexual nutjobs…. Josh White
You sir, are a shill. You Come into a forum questioning everyone’s IQ, use a stupid made up disorder analogy. In which I can only speculate is your way of saying you appose the second ammendment. In which I can only assume you feel the Agents where justified in exercising their second ammendment right, and yet the man in question never fired a single shot. Debbie Truitt Earley
LaVoy carried revolvers. The 9mm was a planted stolen gun from two years ago planted by the officers. Serial #54119868 Adam Ruff
True – he carried a 45 revolver from what I understand. I would love to know Debbie if you have any information about the 9mm which I also believe was planted. Is the serial number you posted legit and where did you get the information? Please let me know so I can pass the information on to the right people. Marine1954
shooting a unarmed person is just being a pussy . all fbi that shot should be up on charges Thom*
The Oregonian Is as much responsible for his murder as the thugs that pulled the triggers and shot the unarmed rancher and then turned their automatic rapid fire rifles on the 3 unarmed persons who were in the pickup . 2 of whom were women. They sure did release a video which they claimed was unedited (Lie #1) poor quality and behind the cover of pine trees undeliberate (lie #2 and 3) No sound making it impossible too tell who fired first and only. They say different (lie #4) Then they say there was no dash cams (lie#5) No (lapel cams???) The pickup truck LaVoy was driving with his three passengers was later after dark towed to an enclosed lot with locks on the gates and covered with a tarp. (Why cover it)??? They said LaVoy was shot 3 times, the coroner said he was shot 9 times once in the face (lie #5, 6,or 7) I lost count. The FBI said they found a gun on LaVoy the returned data on the gun said it was a gun that had been stolen 2 years ago???? LaVoy didn’t even so much as have a traffic ticket. That gun was planted I would bet my life on it. The Oregonian sold this story to its readers like it was a “hole in the wall gang ready to blaze away at the cops and forcefully taking over a gov’t compound” . The Oregonian lied just to sell their lousy newspapers. The Oregonian could have prevented this murder but they were more interested in selling newspapers. This was just the last of many confrontations between the BLM and the ranchers with more to come and I expect them to get more violent per incident. Now the ranchers know that the FBI and BLM have no problem shooting unarmed civilians. Lot more to this story and you really need to do your homework. It started years ago. Wendy J. Colby
It wasn’t what the FBI wanted only because those in the truck survived thanks to LaVoy Finicum an absolute hero and patriot. Jim Richardson
Who was Jim Dunakin? Chuck Fluharty
Maybe they should have used a little bit of that kind of Justice on the rioters in Ferguson that where looting stealing and burning down a town for a month but no some ranchers take over a abondon wildlife refuge building and you kill them maybe next time there’s a riot a bunch of good old boys should saddle up and show them how to end a riot oh but wait the blacks and the wannabees can get away with what they want because they where slaves theres a difference between peaceful protest and tearing down a whole city unbelieviable Adam Ruff
LaVoy Finicum was assassinated by the US government because he was exposing their illegal land grabs all over the west and his message was catching fire with ranchers all over the country. They killed him to keep him quiet. He and the others were on their way to give a talk to hundreds in the next county about the illegal land grabs. Those who participated in the murder of LaVoy Finicum are traitors to their country and to the oath to the Constitution they took. Those who participated in this murder are the terrorists, they are the criminals, they are the killers. To any of you who think this was in any way justified, you can go straight to hell, you are traitors to your country too. Mike Bonnett
And today the US military admits they have been using combat drones inside the US in violation of the Constitution….. That is where that aerial footage is from… Robert Capa
A guy runs over a blockade, is known to be armed and reaches for gis gun (no, he was not wonded at that time). Shoot me! He said. Gets shot by the police. I guess all those who post here that the police were murders, are active members of Black Lives Matter. Because those guys on the city are not given tha chance to surrender. ANON
Play those games, win those prizes. angry bird
After watching the synchronized videos, it is apparent that The killing of Mr. Finicum was a planned and staged execution. I can only hope those involved receive what they have dished out.
Heartfelt prayers shine on the Finicum family so sorry for your loss and May Lavoy be blessed in heaven and honored righteously here on earth Amen Social | 0 |
A leading US attorney warned staffers that many Americans view Hillary Clinton’s contradictory remarks over her choice to use a private email server as “twisted” and illegal behavior. It’s just one of the revelations from the latest Wikileaks dump of emails hacked from the Clinton presidential campaign. WikiLeaks has dumped yet another batch of emails from the account of Hillary Clinton’s beleaguered campaign chair, John Podesta. This is the 21st batch of messages to be published by the whistleblowing site.
RELEASE: The Podesta Emails Part 21 #PodestaEmails #PodestaEmails21 #HillaryClinton https://t.co/wzxeh70oUm pic.twitter.com/kkdyFXmTLD
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 28, 2016
The damage to Hillary Clinton’s campaign can not be underestimated and there is still more to come. WikiLeaks have said there will be a total of 50,000 emails released in the lead up to the November 8 US presidential election. Friday’s batch brings the total so far to 35,594.
In them, an email from leading US attorney Erika Rottenberg to Clinton staffers reveals that many US lawyers had serious doubts over the legality of Hillary Clinton using a private server for her emails, when she was the US Secretary of State. In an exchange dating to June 2015, Rottenberg suggests that Clinton’s actions are both suspicious and hypocritical. “I know when I talk to my friends who are attorneys we are all struggling with what happened to the emails and aren’t satisfied with answers to date.
“While we all know of the occasional use of personal email addresses for business, none of my friends circle can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents without providing anyone outside her circle a chance to weigh in.”
Rottenberg goes on to imply that Clinton may be guilty of illegal activity.
“It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for.”
Hillary Clinton has never been able to shake the specter of her emails scandal and while questions of legality, as well as of potential security breaches, remain unanswered, the debacle continues to wound her campaign’s chances. In an effort to redirect the US public’s attention, other Clinton staffers urged their candidate to better pander to “dumb” millennials to get them “to fall in line.” In February 2016, marketing executive Wendy Bronfein told Clinton insiders that Bernie Sanders was appealing to young voters, and that Clinton needed to do so too. “She may not be the best face of it so maybe it’s trending figures to advocate for her b/c that’s the crap that young people pay attention to. I hate to generalize a generation but by social media nature, they ‘follow’. So if someone they identify as cool endorses — they will likely fall in line with that.” In a dismissive aside, she ended: “Don’t forget Bill had ‘don’t stop’ campaign song, that was a pop culture play and had his Saxophone moments. It’s f$*king dumb but being ‘cool’ counts for more than it maybe should.”
The patronizing tone of such exchanges has enraged many voters, who have take to social media to protest.
Earlier in January 2015, another campaign insider urged Clinton to pander to ethnic minorities.
Neera Tanden is a long standing Clinton insider, at the same time as being the president of the think tank, the Center for American Progress. One email from Friday’s WikiLeaks batch shows Tanden challenging Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta himself.
“I’m not the diversity police but there is grumbling on the 4 white boys running next presidential cycle. So I recommend rolling out some people who look like the rest of America soon!”
Podesta’s response: “Really, don’t you think I know that?” If only Podesta had known then that tens of thousands of his emails were soon to be hacked…
Source: Sputnik News
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UNITED NATIONS — The new secretary general of the United Nations said on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s visa bans for citizens of seven nations “violate our basic principles” and would do little to stem the threat of terrorism. “This is not the way to best protect the United States or any other country in relation to the serious concerns that exist of the possibilities of terrorist infiltration,” said the secretary general, António Guterres, in his first detailed remarks on President Trump’s executive order, which also indefinitely suspended Syrian refugee resettlement. “I think these measures should be removed sooner rather than later. ” Mr. Guterres, who took over as leader of the United Nations a month ago, was for 10 years the head of the United Nations refugee agency. He said Syrians today had the most urgent need for protection. “I strongly hope that the U. S. will be able to its very solid refugee protection in resettlement and I hope that the Syrians will not be excluded in that process,” Mr. Guterres told reporters at the United Nations headquarters. The secretary general stopped short of calling Mr. Trump’s executive order illegal under international law. But asked whether it violates international obligations, he said: “I think that those measures indeed violate our basic principles. And I think that they are not effective if the objective is to really avoid terrorists to enter the United States. ” Mr. Guterres is under enormous pressure. On the one hand, he must speak out against discrimination, in keeping with the rules enshrined in international conventions. On the other, he needs to avoid alienating the president of the United States, which is the United Nations’ biggest financial backer. Mr. Guterres declined to comment about the White House’s reported threats to cut financial support to the United Nations, saying he did not want to prejudge what has not yet been announced. “When you talk too much about things that have not happened, you trigger the happening of those things,” he said. He said he had held “a very constructive discussion” with the new United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley. “What I am doing is to do everything I can to prove the added value of the U. N. to recognize the U. N. needs reforms, to be totally committed to those reforms,” Mr. Guterres said. That, he argued, is “the best way to get, indeed, the support of all member states, including the United States of America and the new administration. ” Mr. Guterres had been more restrained in his criticism of the Trump administration’s travel ban than some others at the United Nations. The organization’s top human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad said in a Twitter post this week that Mr. Trump’s order flouted international law. On Wednesday, five independent human rights experts for the United Nations also criticized the Trump administration in a statement that described the new American policy as a discriminatory action that had stigmatized Muslim communities. The countries affected by Mr. Trump’s order are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Mr. Guterres, in his comments on Wednesday, also warned of a backlash. “When we adopt measures that spread anxiety and anger,” he said, “we help trigger the kind of recruitment mechanism that these organizations are doing everywhere in the world. ” Legal experts say the executive order could collide with international law. It is already facing numerous legal challenges in American courts. No country is legally obliged to provide resettlement to refugees, and every country has the sovereign right to decide who is admitted into its territory. But the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty that came into force in 1976, prohibits a country from passing laws that discriminate on the basis of religion or national origin. James C. Hathaway, a University of Michigan law professor, argued that the United States therefore cannot limit resettlement based on religion or national origin. Additionally, laws governing the rights of refugees prohibit sending people back to countries where they could face persecution. In a post on the legal site Just Security, Mr. Hathaway called Mr. Trump’s executive order “willfully blind” to the United States’ obligation under that law. | 1 |
Imagine you are Dean for a Day. What is one actionable change you would implement to enhance the college experience on campus? I have asked students this question for years. The answers can be . A few years ago, the responses began to move away from “tweak the history course” or “change the ways labs are structured. ” A different commentary, about learning to live wisely, has emerged. What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions? A number of campuses have recently started to offer an opportunity for students to grapple with these questions. On my campus, Harvard, a small group of faculty members and deans created a noncredit seminar called “Reflecting on Your Life. ” The format is simple: three discussion sessions for groups of 12 students, led by faculty members, advisers or deans. Well over 100 students participate each year. Here are five exercises that students find particularly engaging. Each is designed to help freshmen identify their goals and reflect systematically about various aspects of their personal lives, and to connect what they discover to what they actually do at college. 1. For the first exercise, we ask students to make a list of how they want to spend their time at college. What matters to you? This might be going to class, studying, spending time with close friends, perhaps volunteering in the community or reading books not on any course’s required reading list. Then students make a list of how they actually spent their time, on average, each day over the past week and match the two lists. Finally, we pose the question: How well do your commitments actually match your goals? A few students find a strong overlap between the lists. The majority don’t. They are stunned and dismayed to discover they are spending much of their precious time on activities they don’t value highly. The challenge is how to align your time commitments to reflect your personal convictions. 2. Deciding on a major can be amazingly difficult. One student in our group was having a hard time choosing between government and science. How was she spending her spare time? She described being active in the Institute of Politics, running the Model U. N. and writing regularly for The Political Review. The discussion leader noted that she hadn’t mentioned the word “lab” in her summary. “Labs?” replied the student, looking incredulous. “Why would I mention labs when talking about my spare time?” Half an hour after the session, the group leader got an email thanking him for posing the question. 3. I call this the Broad vs. Deep Exercise. If you could become extraordinarily good at one thing versus being pretty good at many things, which approach would you choose? We invite students to think about how to organize their college life to follow their chosen path in a purposeful way. 4. In the Core Values Exercise, students are presented with a sheet of paper with about 25 words on it. The words include “dignity,” “love,” “fame,” “family,” “excellence,” “wealth” and “wisdom. ” They are told to circle the five words that best describe their core values. Now, we ask, how might you deal with a situation where your core values come into conflict with one another? Students find this question particularly difficult. One student brought up his own personal dilemma: He wants to be a surgeon, and he also wants to have a large family. So his core values included the words “useful” and “family. ” He said he worries a lot whether he could be a successful surgeon while also being a devoted father. Students couldn’t stop talking about this example, as many saw themselves facing a similar challenge. 5. This exercise presents the parable of a happy fisherman living a simple life on a small island. The fellow goes fishing for a few hours every day. He catches a few fish, sells them to his friends, and enjoys spending the rest of the day with his wife and children, and napping. He couldn’t imagine changing a thing in his relaxed and easy life. Let’s tweak the parable: A recent M. B. A. visits this island and quickly sees how this fisherman could become rich. He could catch more fish, start up a business, market the fish, open a cannery, maybe even issue an I. P. O. Ultimately he would become truly successful. He could donate some of his fish to hungry children worldwide and might even save lives. “And then what?” asks the fisherman. “Then you could spend lots of time with your family,” replies the visitor. “Yet you would have made a difference in the world. You would have used your talents, and fed some poor children, instead of just lying around all day. ” We ask students to apply this parable to their own lives. Is it more important to you to have little, be less traditionally successful, yet be relaxed and happy and spend time with family? Or is it more important to you to work hard, perhaps start a business, maybe even make the world a better place along the way? Typically, this simple parable leads to substantial disagreement. These discussions encourage undergraduates to think about what really matters to them, and what each of us feels we might owe, or not owe, to the broader community — ideas that our students can capitalize on throughout their time at college. At the end of our sessions, I say to my group: “Tell me one thing you have changed your mind about this year,” and many responses reflect a remarkable level of introspection. Three years later, when we check in with participants, nearly all report that the discussions had been valuable, a step toward turning college into the transformational experience it is meant to be. | 1 |
Ever wonder what’s on the mind of today’s most notable people? Well, don’t miss our unbelievable roundup of the best and most talked about quotes of the day: “ Toads are dry and frogs are wet. What more do I have to say? ” —Bindi Irwin On telling frogs and toads apart “ When I was in college, I would sometimes run around campus and frantically shout for everyone to go to the river because someone was drowning. It would really get people’s attention, and we’d all run to the river. Then in the middle of the river would be a big box with the word ‘SOCIETY’ written on the side of it that I had planted there. I’d then look at everyone and go ‘What are you going to do?’ ” —Moby On why he was kicked out of school “ When I was a kid, my father would point to our television and say, ‘Son, one day you are going to be inside of that thing telling everyone about the latest Bruno Mars dance.’ ” —Willie Geist | 0 |
Eleven weeks after a federal jury condemned Dylann S. Roof to death for killing nine worshipers at a black church in Charleston, S. C. state prosecutors announced on Friday that they would end a separate case by allowing him to plead guilty to murder in exchange for a life sentence. After the Bible study massacre in June 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the state and federal governments each announced they would seek to execute the avowed white supremacist. A state grand jury indicted him for murder and attempted murder while a federal grand jury charged him with 33 counts, including hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of exercise of religion and use of a firearm to commit murder. Mr. Roof said in a remorseless confession and in various writings that he planned the attack in hopes of fomenting a race war. But federal prosecutors beat their state counterparts to court, leaving Scarlett A. Wilson, the chief prosecutor for Charleston County, to decide whether to put survivors and victims’ families through a second traumatic trial, at taxpayer expense, in pursuit of a duplicate sentence. As had been expected since the end of the federal trial in January, Ms. Wilson concluded that the 18 death sentences from that case would suffice. Last year, the Justice Department rejected Mr. Roof’s offer to plead guilty to the federal charges in exchange for a life sentence. Mr. Roof, who represented himself for part of his case and presented no evidence in his defense during his federal trial, has filed a motion in federal court seeking a new trial. Ms. Wilson announced her decision in a letter and telephone calls to family members of the victims. Mr. Roof’s state public defender, D. Ashley Pennington, confirmed the details. Ms. Wilson said in an interview that Mr. Roof, 22, would plead guilty at a hearing on April 10 to nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder (two adults and a child survived). He then would be transferred from the Charleston County jail to a federal prison. Appeals are likely to delay his execution for years. In her letter, Ms. Wilson described Mr. Roof’s agreement to plead guilty as “an insurance policy to the federal conviction and sentence. ” “If something very, very, very unlikely were to happen at the federal level,” she wrote, “the state sentence would take effect and he would serve life in prison. (And no more trials! )” Many victims’ family members have opposed the death penalty for Mr. Roof. But Andrew J. Savage, a Charleston lawyer who represents two women who survived the shootings and the families of several victims, said his clients were pleased primarily because the plea deal brings the case to a close, at least at the trial level. Family members and survivors filled half of the courtroom each day during Mr. Roof’s federal trial. They endured the presentation of gruesome crime scene photos of their deceased loved ones, and many testified tearfully about the loss they experienced. “There was a sense of relief that this keeps the victims and witnesses from going through another trial, which they really did not want to do,” Mr. Savage said. | 1 |
Ian Greenhalgh is a photographer and historian with a particular interest in military history and the real causes of conflicts. His studies in history and background in the media industry have given him a keen insight into the use of mass media as a creator of conflict in the modern world. His favored areas of study include state sponsored terrorism, media manufactured reality and the role of intelligence services in manipulation of populations and the perception of events. Turkish Disinfo: Daesh terrorist leader Baghdadi urges followers to attack Turkey By Ian Greenhalgh on November 4, 2016 Turkish map showing the planned annexation of northern Syrian and Iraq including the cities of Mosul and Aleppo [Editor’s note: This story is deliberate disinfo put out by a newspaper that is controlled by the Turkish government and functions as a mouthpiece for their propaganda and disinfo. The claim that Daesh is to target Turkey is nonsense, the goal of this story is to give Turkey an excuse for further military action in Syria and Iraq, they can simply use the excuse that they are attacking Daesh in response to Al-Baghdadi’s call for attacks on Turkey. Turkey aims to seize large portions of Syrian and Iraqi territory including the cities of Mosul and Aleppo, they are planning to move on Kurdish held Manbij shortly and have been massing forces on their side of the border in preparation for further offensive moves. The big question is why the US and Russia are remaining silent on the matter of Turkish military adventurism aimed at annexation of Syrian and Iraqi territory in order to create what Davutoglu calls ‘Lebensraum’ for the Turkish people, part of a plan to restore the Ottoman empire. Ian] Daesh terrorist leader Baghdadi urges followers to attack Turkey
The Daesh terrorist group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is currently believed to be in Mosul, called on his supporters to take the battle to Turkey and carry out attacks in the country. Baghdadi’s call, which was released in a voice recording on Thursday, is the first message he issued after Iraqi forces backed by the U.S. launched an offensive in Mosul to take the city back from the terrorists.
In the 31-minute-long recording, Baghdadi expressed confidence that Daesh will be victorious in Mosul, and told his followers to invade Turkey.
“Unleash the fire of your anger on Turkish troops in Syria” the terrorist leader said and added:
“Turkey today entered your range of action and the aim of your struggle … invade it and turn its safety into fear.”
Baghdadi claimed that Turkey is cooperating with Atheists, therefore deserves to be attacked and targeted.
He also urged Daesh terrorist fighters to target security forces, members of the ruling Al Saud monarch and media outlets in Saudi Arabia and launch simultaneous attacks, as he claimed they were also cooperating with ‘infidel nations’ in Syria and Iraq.
With a population of over 1.5 million people, Mosul stands as a bastion of the terrorist group.
Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield in late August to clear Syria’s northern border area of terrorists. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) units backed by Turkish forces were able to liberate Jarablus and more than 32 villages west of the Euphrates River following Turkey’s operation.
In December 2015, Daesh released a video urging the conquest of Istanbul and Turkey and called President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ‘Satan,’ while harshly criticizing him for supporting the U.S.-led coalition against the terrorists.
In its determined fight against the terrorists, Turkey has prevented the entry of over 52,075 people from entering the country and detained thousands of Daesh suspects, since the start of 2016, according to Interior Ministry figures. Moreover, since 2011, Turkey has deported more than 3,290 foreign terrorist fighters from 95 countries and refused entry to more than 38,269 individuals in its fight against Daesh, which counts the Muslim-majority country as an enemy.
Daesh terrorists frequently target Turkey, which has recognized it as a terrorist group in October 2013. It is responsible for a string of terror attacks in Ankara and Istanbul, as well as cross-border fire from Syria that has killed a number of residents in Turkish border towns over the last year. Related Posts: | 0 |
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Well, if this doesn’t inspire you to do your civic duty, nothing will!
When California resident Candice Payne woke up this morning, she wasn’t totally sure she was up to going through the hassle of voting. She figured the lines would be long, the wait would be awful, and the stress probably wouldn’t be worth it. But just when this 26-year-old woman was feeling too lazy to vote, something absolutely amazing happened—her ovaries burst out of her body and dragged her to the polling place.
Amazing! Now THAT is how you rally on Election Day!
Like so many Americans, Candice spent her morning lying in her bed, kicking herself for not having voted early, but as soon as it seemed like she’d go back to sleep, her fallopian tubes shot out of her abdomen, curled themselves around the side of her bed, and threw her to the floor. After dragging her body to her living room, her helpful ovaries crawled up to the doorknob and jostled the front door open. What started out as a lazy morning ended with her ovaries anchoring themselves to the floor and pulling the rest of her body to a polling place at nearby Jefferson Public School, where she dutifully filled out her ballot for President of the United States!
If that’s not getting out the vote, we don’t know what is! It’s definitely easy to come up with a million excuses to avoid the polls, but once Candice’s ovaries had shot out of her body, they weren’t going to retract back inside until she had done her civic duty!
While it might have been a bit of an inconvenience to spend the morning voting, no matter how much she tried to resist, Candice’s ovaries kept pulling and clawing at the floor, dragging her flailing body farther and farther until she arrived at a voting booth to cast her vote. Sure, she would rather have been sleeping, or at work, but three miles and several forceful tugs later, she was inside a voting booth and back on her feet, casting her ballot, and exercising her fundamental American right.
Awesome. If you’re thinking of just staying inside, going to work, and skipping the polls altogether, it’s not too late to change your mind. Candice felt just like you once, but after being violently dragged by her ovaries to a polling station, she’s never felt better! | 0 |
Next Swipe left/right This Irish TV channel killed their weather presenter for Halloween What did you do to celebrate Halloween last night? Irish language broadcaster TG4 killed their weather presenter. RIP Caitlín Nic Aoidh. Wtf just happened to caitlin on the weather tonight? #TG4XX pic.twitter.com/IOUR3xiLgy | 0 |
BEIT EL, West Bank — There’s the Friedman Faculty House, the Rabbi Morris Friedman Center for Computer Sciences, a Friedman fitness room at a academy, a playground and a plaza. The plaques dedicating sites around Beit El, a religious Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank, attest to years of financial, emotional and family bonds nurtured by an American lawyer, David M. Friedman, and his wife, Tammy. Under previous administrations, American diplomats have been barred from setting foot in such settlements, viewed by most of the world as a violation of international law and branded by the Obama administration as “illegitimate. ” But Mr. Friedman, President Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, upends the conventional protocols and has espoused views to the right of Israel’s conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island, has rejected the internationally accepted solution for the conflict. And as president of the American arm of Beit El’s yeshiva complex, he has raised millions of dollars for its related institutions, including housing projects for teachers and students. He has made almost yearly visits there during the Jewish holiday Sukkot. In the days leading up to Mr. Netanyahu’s first meeting with Mr. Trump as president, and Mr. Friedman’s confirmation hearings, which are expected to start on Thursday, the mood in Beit El seemed to encapsulate all the uncertainty and contradictions manifested by the new administration. On the one hand, Mr. Trump publicly signaled last week that the administration had neared its limit with settlement expansion, saying in an interview that he did not believe it to be “a good thing for peace. ” But Mr. Trump’s foundation once made a $10, 000 donation to Beit El’s yeshiva institutions in honor of the Friedmans. And the parents of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s and adviser, have donated generously, Yaakov Katz, a founder of Beit El and its enterprise, said in a radio interview in December. Swinging between hopes of almost unbridled settlement growth and skepticism, several residents said they were “cautiously optimistic. ” Located north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, in the heartland of the territory of any future Palestinian state, Beit El is an ideological hotbed of the settler movement and has strong biblical associations. Its name is Hebrew for house of God, and some scholars have identified its location as the place where Jacob, the biblical patriarch, laid his head on a pillow of stones and dreamed of angels ascending and descending a ladder between heaven and earth. A large, upright stone on a terraced hillside on the edge of the settlement is revered as the one that Jacob slept on, then anointed with oil, after God appeared in the dream and promised all the land around to him and his progeny. Archaeological excavations in the area have found signs of ancient life. The Palestinian village of Beitin sits on a nearby hill. Mr. Netanyahu has said in the past that he would not evacuate Beit El under any agreement with the Palestinians, even though it lies outside the major settlement blocs that Israeli leaders have more generally insisted on keeping. Founded in 1977 on private Palestinian land originally seized by Israel for military purposes, the settlement was later approved by the Israeli courts under the rubric of general security. Now it is home to about 6, 500 people who mostly live in modest, or buildings. There are plans in the pipeline for at least 300 new apartments in buildings to be constructed on a rise by the entrance to the settlement. But the yeshiva complex has so far proven to be Beit El’s main engine of growth. Considered a prime institution of religious Zionism, the yeshiva is headed by Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, a who has denounced homosexuality as a “perversion” and “a severe mental illness” and has ruled that it is forbidden for soldiers or police to participate in the evacuation of settlements. On a recent morning, dozens of yeshiva students in their late teens or early 20s were huddled over Talmudic texts, alone or in pairs, in the vast hall of a new building that was completed last year. “Beit El’s greatest ‘product’ is its educational institutions,” said Chaim Silberstein, a South resident and member of the local council who moved here as a yeshiva student in the 1980s. “It’s an industry. ” Mr. Katz, known as Ketzale, was the driving force behind the yeshiva, its religious high schools for boys and girls and the academy. A charismatic former member of the Israeli Parliament from a party, Mr. Katz, a staunch nationalist, is credited with building up the network in the United States and bringing in tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Friedman’s late father, Morris, commemorated on a plaque as a “founding member of Beit El,” was one of the first American Jews to meet Mr. Katz when he started going to the United States more than quarter of a century ago and could barely speak English, according to Mr. Silberstein. Another was Eugen Gluck, Beit El’s main American benefactor, whose name graces the settlement’s clinic. When Mr. Friedman’s nomination was announced, Mr. Katz praised him on his Facebook page as a pioneering philanthropist and settlement builder. Posting a photograph of the two of them on a boat, Mr. Katz described Mr. Friedman as “like a brother to me. ” Mr. Silberstein emphasized that the money was raised for the educational institutions, not the settlement itself — an important distinction for the contributions to qualify as donations to settlements under American tax laws. But the yeshiva complex is a multitentacled enterprise. Its institutions include the Arutz Sheva news site, for which Mr. Friedman has written a number of columns, and Besheva weekly. Arutz Sheva, which caters to Israel’s nationalist camp, started out as a pirate radio station broadcasting from a ship acquired by Mr. Katz. The yeshiva complex also runs a tour company and a rabbinical website. One of the stated goals of its online efforts, it says, is to “delegitimize the notion of the solution,” spreading its influence far beyond the geographical confines of Beit El. Then there is the real estate. Among the projects built to accommodate yeshiva staff members and students was the Ulpana neighborhood, which was partially evacuated in 2012 by court order because it was built illegally on private Palestinian land. According to the newspaper Haaretz, many fraudulent land deals in Beit El were subsequently found to have been covered up by forged documents. The government retroactively approved another project of 20 apartments in a building under construction when it announced thousands of new settlement housing units last month. Wedged between existing buildings, the project had to be redesigned because parts of it were also found to have encroached on land. Peace Now, an Israeli group, recently revealed that the latest plan was developed by the nonprofit Sukkat Ovadia Learning Center, another beneficiary of the Friends of the Beit El Yeshiva network, having received more than $600, 000 in 2015, according to its financial reports. Mr. Silberstein, the council member, said that old land records of the area were notoriously imprecise and that many, though not all, of the building irregularities were innocent mistakes. Mr. Friedman, he added, was a settlement builder in a “figurative” sense. “Any donor likes to think he’s a builder,” Mr. Silberstein said. “A donor doesn’t like to pay for salaries and food. ” Beit El’s other concerns are by comparison: a factory for tefillin, or phylacteries a bakeshop called Herby’s and some workshops for aluminum and carpentry. Local Palestinians are employed, mainly in construction. Even after 40 years, there is a constant tension between the temporary and the permanent. Mr. Silberstein said his “macro outlook” was to create a momentum in building throughout the West Bank that would lead to an “irreversible situation” and “solidify Israel’s presence in its historic homeland. ” At the micro level, he said, he hopes Beit El’s population will reach 10, 000 in the next five years and ensure that even in the event of any withdrawal from the territory, Beit El would end up within Israel’s borders. Elena Mordechai, a special education assistant and mother of nine, moved here from Jerusalem in the 1990s. She said her friends thought she was crazy to invest in Beit El then, when Israel and the Palestinians seemed poised to reach a territorial agreement. Now she puts her faith in God. “We trust that the one who is running things is the Holy One, blessed be he, up there,” she said. “Not Bibi,” she added, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname, “and not Trump. ” | 1 |
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How did the "growing trust" that Russian President Vladimir Putin once said marked his "working and personal relationship with President Obama " change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling?
Their relationship reached its zenith after Mr. Putin persuaded Syria to give up its chemical weapons for verified destruction, enabling Mr. Obama at the last minute to call off, with some grace, plans to attack Syria in late summer 2013. But at an international conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi last week, Mr. Putin spoke of the "feverish" state of international relations and lamented: "My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results." He complained about "people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice" and, referring to Syria, decried the lack of a "common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises."
A month earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov , who chooses his words carefully, told Russian TV viewers, "My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the U.S. military machine. Despite [Mr. Kerry’s] assurances that the US commander in chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin) apparently the military does not really listen to the commander in chief."
Do not chalk this up to paranoia. The U.S.-led coalition air strikes on known Syrian army positions killing scores of troops just five days into the September cease-fire – not to mention statements at the time by the most senior US generals – were evidence enough to convince the Russians that the Pentagon was intent on scuttling meaningful cooperation with Russia.
Relations between the US and Russian presidents have now reached a nadir, and Mr. Putin has ordered his own defense ministry to throw down the gauntlet. On Oct. 6, ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russia is prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft – including any stealth aircraft – over Syria, and warned ominously that Russian air defense will not have time to identify the origin of the aircraft.
It seems possible that the US air force will challenge that claim in due course – perhaps even without seeking prior permission from the White House. Last week, National Intelligence Director and former Air Force General James Clapper commented offhandedly, "I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft … if they felt it was threatening their forces on the ground."
Injecting additional volatility into the equation, major news outlets are playing down or ignoring Russia’s warnings. Thus, Americans who depend on the corporate media can be expected to be suitably shocked by what that same media will no doubt cast as naked aggression out of the blue if Russian air defenses down a US or coalition aircraft.
Meanwhile in Europe, as NATO defense ministers met in Brussels on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters the US is contributing "a persistent rotational armored brigade combat team" as a "major sign of the US commitment to strengthening deterrence here."
"This was a decision made by the alliance leaders in Warsaw," he explained, referring to NATO’s July summit meeting in the Polish capital. "The United States will lead a battalion in Poland and deploy an entire battle-ready battalion task force of approximately 900 soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which is based in Germany."
On Thursday, at the Valdai Conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Putin accused the West of promoting the "myth" of a "Russian military threat," calling this a "profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defense budgets … expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units, and arms closer to our borders."
Myth or not, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was correct to point out last spring that military posturing on Russia’s borders will bring less regional security. Mr. Steinmeier warned against "saber-rattling," adding that, "We are well advised not to create pretexts to renew an old confrontation."
Speaking of such pretexts, it is high time to acknowledge that the marked increase in East-West tensions over the past two and a half years originally stemmed from the Western-sponsored coup d’état in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, and Russia’s reaction in annexing Crimea. Americans malnourished on the diet served up by "mainstream" media are blissfully unaware that two weeks before the coup, YouTube published a recording of an intercepted conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Kiev, during which "Yats" (for Arseniy Yatsenyuk) was identified as Washington’s choice to become the new prime minister of the coup government in Kiev.
This unique set of circumstances prompted George Friedman, president of the think-tank STRATFOR, to label the putsch in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, "really the most blatant coup in history."
It’s time for Western politicians and media to learn their lesson and pay attention to the statements coming out of Russia. Ask yourselves: Why all this hype now?
Ray McGovern, like Sam Adams, began a career as a CIA analyst under President Kennedy; working on Vietnam, they became close associates. Sam was too straight-arrow to go to the media about the unconscionable fraud regarding the number of Communist forces. Ray knew that and rationalized not doing so himself. So, while a close associate of Sam Adams years ago, Ray fell short of the standard set by the above awardees, who deserved to be honored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.
Reprinted with the author’s permission from the Baltimore Sun . Read more by Ray McGovern | 0 |
American baking is a jumble of pies, babkas and pastelitos, of red bean buns, coconut layer cakes and sourdoughs. In home kitchens along a single chocolate chip cookies may evolve with more defining characteristics than Darwin’s finches. You might not glean this from watching Season 2 of “The Great American Baking Show,” an cooking series that had its premiere on ABC three weeks ago. Judged by the cookbook author and British television personality Mary Berry and the American pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, the show is a spinoff of the immensely popular “The Great British Bake Off,” which is leaving for Channel 4 after seven seasons on the BBC. This is meant to be an American edition, though much like before, amateur bakers meet in a plain white tent outside of London, surrounded by slopes of lawn and wild rabbits sniffing clean country air. Something isn’t quite right. Familiar faces are missing, and compressing the show into a holiday themed box (by which the producers mean Christmas they always mean Christmas) is immediately confusing. Can the definition of American baking really be limited to fruitcake and gingerbread? The married actors Nia Vardalos and Ian Gomez share the hosting duties and recite a less cheeky version of the terrible puns baked into the DNA of the show, but they lack the onscreen charisma of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who brought a sweet, surreal goofiness to the role on “The Great British Bake Off. ” At one point, Ms. Vardalos directs the bakers to paint a holiday picture with a cookie scene: “It could be Santa’s workshop, it could be an rink with children, there are no limits!” There are limits. The original show broadcasts Christmas specials, but it doesn’t exclusively define British baking with the holiday. At its best, it is a celebration of the complexities of modern, multicultural Britain. Not the more commonly exported Britishness of “Downton Abbey” or “The Crown. ” Not the tweedy white men smoking pipes and sipping claret until they can’t feel feelings anymore. The bakers on “The Great British Bake Off” provide a cheerful lesson on the country as it really is: There is no one color to Britishness, no one faith or accent. All the bakers have equal claims on Britishness, and this notion is so indisputable, it’s built right into the title of the show. Postelection America could have used this kind of lesson as well. The original values regional British masterpieces, dedicating challenges to shiny raised pork pies and Battenberg cakes. And the hosts often interrupt an episode to present about the history of a particular biscuit. But “The Great American Baking Show,” which underestimates American baking, does none of this with its own specialties. In Episode 4, which aired last Thursday, the bakers are at least given a little room. There is no insistence on marzipan Santas or snowmen, so they build tall, colorful meringue pies and dozens of savory tarts. A baker from Atlanta mixes a streaky orange pimento cheese filling, while another from Los Angeles sautées beef inspired by Korean barbecue. One squeezes lime over crumbled paneer. You finally get a sense of what makes American home cooking so exciting: It doesn’t fit too neatly into any one category. Ms. Berry plays her part the same way, more of a stern coach than a judge, listening with patience and critiquing fairly. Mr. Iuzzini replaces Paul Hollywood, a British celebrity chef who judged alongside Ms. Berry, and tends to intimidate bakers with technical questions early in the process. He later assesses them kindly as well. Though the chemistry between the judges and hosts starts off as a weak and awkward flicker, it brightens as the show goes on. And Ms. Vardalos, who gained fame with her 2002 film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” is at her strongest when she goes off script. There’s a moment in the first episode when Mr. Iuzzini is judging cakes and finds the pale blue frosting at the base of an eggnog cake to be somehow incorrect. Instead of indicating Christmas, the colors indicate “Mediterranean, or even Greek. ” “We have Christmas,” Ms. Vardalos says. “The Great American Baking Show,” like the original, zooms in on illustrations of what the bakers are working toward for their “showstopper challenge,” a grand baking project that takes many hours to complete. Something about this has always filled me with tenderness toward even the most charmless bakers. Maybe it’s because, with any ambition, there is often a gap between what you want to do and what you actually achieve. A miserable, insurmountable abyss in some cases. I admire the way the American bakers will dust off their aprons and walk up to the judging table where Ms. Berry and Mr. Iuzzini are waiting, even on a bad day, with a wonky, toppling, broken, undercooked thing. And they stand by their work and invite criticism. This spinoff often misses the point, but at least there is none of the egregious brand placement or useless cruelty, the silly, artificial editing or dramatic music that ruins so many American cooking competitions. There is also nothing to obscure that moment when the bakers are made to understand all the ways in which they have succeeded, and failed. The hosts have changed, the cakes have changed, but this has stayed the same: The bakers nod and grimace and promise to do better next time. And I believe them. | 1 |
Democrats in Congress are fuming at independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for injecting himself into the race for the next Democrat Party Chairman, with many wondering why he deserves a say at all since he won’t join the Democrat Party. [The Democrat candidate for president has been solidly behind Minnesota Congressman and Muslim Keith Ellison, but recently a swell of support for former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez has been seen among many Democrats turned off by Ellison’s laudatory comments about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. One of Perez’ newest and biggest supporters is no less than from former Vice President Joe Biden. This week Biden came out with a formal endorsement of Perez, giving the former Obama appointee his biggest boost yet in the hunt for the Chairmanship of the Democrat National Committee. But in a February 1 Facebook post, Sanders slammed Biden and his endorsement saying it is only another example of the “failed approach” to lead the party. “Joe Biden is a friend of mine and I have a lot of respect for Tom Perez. In terms of the next chair of the DNC, however, the question is simple,” Sanders wrote in his post. “Do we stay with a failed approach or do we go forward with a fundamental restructuring of the Democratic Party? I say we go forward and create a grassroots party which speaks for working people and is prepared to stand up to the top 1 percent. That’s why we have to support Keith Ellison. ” Sanders’ divisive approach runs contrary to his own candidate’s claims to want to bring the Democrat Party together. But many Democrats are even wondering why Sanders thinks he has a say in the matter since he has steadfastly refused to even join the Democrat Party in the first place. Texas Democratic chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, for instance, said Sanders’ meddling was “very concerning,” The Hill reported. “It is very concerning that Bernie Sanders is so intent on taking over a party that he’s not even a member of — that he’d insult the beloved vice president — and really the president — about a failed status quo approach,” Hinojosa said. The Texan went on to wonder why Sanders should even be concerning himself with the race for party chair. “This is coming from a man who is not even a member of our party,” Hinojosa said. “We lost an election and all of a sudden we’re all a part of a failed status quo? When he puts Joe Biden and Tom Perez in this category and paints with a broad brush he insults all of us. This is an election between loyal, qualified Democrats who love our party and the country. There’s no need for him to lower himself to that level. ” Democrat strategist Jamal Simmons agreed, according to the paper. “He doesn’t get to set the standard for a party he’s not a member of,” Simmons said. DNC vice chairman R. T. Rybak also questioned Sanders’ rhetoric, saying that the next party chairman needs to be “looking forward, not back. ” Other Democrats lashed out at Sanders for his “egoism” and for attempting to open up old primary wounds. One Clinton ally reportedly griped, “He’s opening these old wounds and it looks to me also like his ego is at play. Perez and Ellison are cut from the same progressive cloth. Either one would be a strong leader. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
You are here: Home / US / Hard Truth About Violence at Trump Rallies Hard Truth About Violence at Trump Rallies October 28, 2016 Pinterest
Regan Pifer observes that when Hillary Clinton’s supporters say they are with her , they must also mean that they lie for her .
When no trouble exists, Clinton supporters create trouble. And say anything to cast a poor light on Trump and Trump supporters.
Their foul play even extends to claims of physical violence towards women.
The bad news for them (as it has been for Hillary) is that the truth always, eventually comes out.
As reported by Breitbart :
A woman who accused a Donald Trump supporter of punching her outside a Trump rally in North Carolina is backtracking after James O’Keefe and Project Veritas released video showing Democrat operatives claiming she was a trained activist.
69-year-old Shirley Teter of Asheville now says it is possible that 73-year-old Richard L. Campbell merely touched her accidentally, as his attorney had claimed all along.
Originally, Harris told local ABC News affiliate WLOS, “He stopped in his tracks, and he turned around and just cold-cocked me.” She also added a pointed, rhetorical question — namely, whether “people find a Trump supporter punching her in the face deplorable.”
Now, however, Teter is changing her story rather dramatically. She told WLOS on Wednesday that “it’s possible that he could have struck her with his backhand.”
O’Keefe’s undercover video showed Democracy Partners consultant Scott Foval — who has since been fired — claiming that Teeter was a “trained” political activist…
…Facebook video of the altercation shows Campbell — who suffers poor vision as a result of cataracts — being led through a gauntlet of anti-Trump protesters by his wife.
In the video, Teter then follows Campbell and appears to reach for his shoulder. His attorney told Breitbart News that he turned around after being touched, and Teeter then fell down.
You want to know what is really deplorable, Teter? You serving as a lying minion for your lying queen.
And the victim? A poor, older man with cataracts who just wanted to peacefully attend a rally.
Maybe you weren’t lying. Just confused?
I understand how getting “cold cocked” by an intimidating Trump supporter is essentially the same as picking a fight with a quasi- blind man and collapsing like you took a charge in the NBA.
But how can we blame Teter? She teeters around the truth like the Hillz.
If only we could catch all of Clinton’s (and her supporters) lies on video. What a glorious day that would be. | 0 |
Leaders of the broken Democratic Party have a new message to try to stop Republican President Donald J. Trump: He’s a part of the political “establishment” and is not really a “populist” president. [“Let me just say about his address, it was populist, but I’m worried he’s using populist rhetoric to cover up a agenda,” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer ( ) told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “If you look at his Cabinet appointments, so many of them are not populist, but . ” Rep. Keith Ellison ( ) a leading candidate for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and hardcore progressive leftist, actually Tweeted that Trump is not really a populist. Ellison’s argument is because President Trump raised Federal Housing Administration mortgage fees back to the levels they were at before former President Barack Obama, on his way out of office, slashed them. Wonder whether @realDonaldTrump was economic populist? Here’s your answer: first day as president, he raises FHA mortgage insurance fees. — Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 22, 2017, Schumer similarly hammered Trump for this, but even the and highly liberal editorial board of the Washington Post — which is funded by Trump detractor and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — stood up for Trump in this regard with a scathing editorial bashing Democrats for criticizing Trump over this. “One of the Obama administration’s final actions was to slash the fee that mortgage borrowers must pay for Federal Housing Administration insurance on eligible loans,” the Post’s editorial board wrote. “One of President Trump’s first actions Jan. 20 was to suspend that move pending further study. Democrats accused him of heartlessly hiking costs for the FHA’s and clientele by $500 per year on a typical $200, 000 loan. ” They quoted Schumer’s statement, which accused Trump of hypocrisy on populism and standing up for American workers and families. “One hour after talking about helping working people and ending the cabal in Washington that hurts people, he signs a regulation that makes it more expensive for new homeowners to buy mortgages,” Schumer said. But, the Washington Post shot down the Democratic leader as fast as he shot at Trump, in just two words: “Well, no. ” The Post proceeded to dismantle Schumer’s and Ellison’s arguments against Trump. But Schumer and Ellison aren’t the only Democrats trying out the new talking points accusing Trump of being part of the establishment: Sen. Bernie Sanders ( ) is also calling the notion that Trump is “absurd. ” Sanders’ argument? That Trump’s cabinet is too rich and successful for him to really be . It’d be funny if it wasn’t so absurd: Trump, a billionaire, surrounded at his inauguration by billionaires, says he’s . — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 23, 2017, The Democratic Party is in tough shape after getting swept in the 2016 elections. They lost the White House, failed to pick up majorities in either the U. S. House or U. S. Senate, and saw Republicans retain a majority of governorships and bolster GOP control of statehouses nationwide. Now, they can’t even elect a DNC chair to succeed interim chairwoman Donna Brazile — who along with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz ( ) was caught aiding failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries against Sanders in an unfair manner — without serious problems. Ellison is just one of many candidates for the post, and along fellow candidate former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and the others, wants to take the Democratic Party even further left away from standing up for American workers — leaving Trump an opening where labor union leaders like the ’s Richard Trumka and the Teamsters’ Jimmy Hoffa among others are praising Trump while their members support Trump in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere. | 1 |
The Canadian Parliament is debating a motion urging the government to “condemn Islamophobia” and “quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear. ”[Motion 103, or as it is commonly called, was introduced in the House of Commons by Iqra Khalid, a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) and a Muslim Canadian. Not long after an attack on a Quebec mosque in late January, the motion is now being debated in the House of Commons. It calls on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to undertake a study on what the government could do to reduce or eliminate systemic racism including Islamophobia and to present its findings no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of the motion. The motion has generated passionate debate between supporters and opponents, and has raised at least five serious points of contention. Although summons the government to “recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear,” its proponents have produced no evidence for the claim that such a public climate is indeed growing. No statistics were presented to Parliament and no cases of Islamophobia were cited to back up the claim that violence is on the rise in Canada. On introducing the motion, Khalid cited strong sentiment in Canada, alleging that she was “among thousands of Muslims who have been victimized because of hate and fear,” but no further evidence of such victimization was furnished. According to Freudian psychology, a phobia is “an overwhelming and unreasonable fear of an object or situation that poses little real danger but provokes anxiety and avoidance. ” Properly understood, therefore, a phobia is not just a fear, but an irrational fear that goes far beyond any real possible harm. It is the disproportion between the fear and the danger and the unreasonableness of the dread that characterizes a phobia. Who will judge what degree of fear is proportionate in this case? Moreover, who will judge which expressions of concern over Islam are motivated by an irrational fear rather than an appropriate prudence? Conservative MPs have contended that condemning “Islamophobia” without defining it could stifle legitimate debate about controversial issues like sharia law and the niqab. The problem here is that any discussion of sharia law, the danger of Islamic terrorism or simply the relationship between the Islamic worldview and that of the West could easily provoke the accusation of Islamophobia. Evidence of this can be seen in the way that the other phobia du jour — “homophobia” — is commonly used an as paralyzing insult for anyone who manifests the slightest hesitation to embrace homosexual activity as an unqualified moral good. A number of opponents to have sustained that the motion threatens free speech by targeting an attitude (“Islamophobia”) rather than a certain sort of illegal behavior. Many have logically deduced that measures aimed at curbing Islamophobia would include government propaganda encouraging positive views of Islam, along with pressure on individuals not to express negative opinions. Among Conservative politicians, Brad Trost expressed his fear that the motion would be an instrument of the “thought police in Ottawa. ” Chris Alexander, the former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said that is “ground zero” for freedom of speech, not just in Canada “but for the world today. ” Although condemns “all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination,” it only mentions one by name: “Islamophobia. ” The motion refers to Islamophobia twice, while never mentioning or the need to combat discrimination — which arguably occurs far more often in Canada than victimization of Muslims. Critics such as Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch have suggested that the motion is singling out Islam for “special treatment” by mentioning it by name while lumping the rest together under the generic title of “religious discrimination. ” The introduction of hate legislation has undermined the right order of criminal justice by irrationally elevating the human passion of “hate” above other passions such as pride, anger, lust, envy and a host of other possible motives for malfeasance. A motion like replicates this legislation by addressing a state of mind — Islamophobia — rather than illegal behavior. Whether or not the motion translates into law, it creates an atmosphere where certain opinions are considered unlawful and others are prohibited. In traditional jurisprudence, hate only becomes a criminal problem when one’s behavior contravenes the law. When prosecutors investigate motive and premeditation, they do so only to ascertain guilt and the level of personal responsibility involved in a given act. They do not try to measure the quality of the motive. The matter of criminal law, moreover, is not internal dispositions but external actions. These and other arguments would suggest that the best way for government to counteract violence against groups or individuals is not by stifling debate or trying to sway public opinion, but by making it clear that certain behavior will not be tolerated, regardless of one’s motives or intentions. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
President Donald J. Trump’s admiration for Andrew Jackson is well known. He hung his portrait in the Oval Office, and last spring criticized the Treasury Department’s decision to take Jackson off the front of the $20 bill. And on Wednesday, Jackson’s 250th birthday, Mr. Trump visited the Hermitage, Jackson’s home in Nashville, where he laid a wreath at his tomb and paid tribute to Old Hickory’s populism. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Mr. Trump said. “Does that sound familiar?” Jackson’s historical reputation has declined sharply in recent decades, especially among Democrats. The party that once celebrated him as a central pillar has rushed to remove his name from symbolic places of honor, distancing itself from his record on slavery and the forced relocation of American Indian nations from the South. But Mr. Trump’s visit, as it happens, came 50 years to the day after Lyndon B. Johnson laid a birthday wreath on Jackson’s grave, one of a stream of presidential visitors including Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, each of whom used Jackson to bolster his own vision. “Jackson was a forceful president who attracts presidents who believe in a forceful presidency,” the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, the author of the recent book “The Politicians and the Egalitarians” (and himself a staunch liberal defender of Jackson) said via email. The roster of visitors, Mr. Wilentz added, showed that Jackson was once “firmly in the progressive pantheon. ” Heather Cox Richardson, a historian at Boston College who takes a less admiring view of Jackson than Mr. Wilentz, said the list reflected the nature of the populism that Jackson injected into American politics. “Jackson can be seen in two very different ways, just as Americans look at populism in two different ways,” she said. “We like it, because we like the idea of people having power over government. And we don’t like it, because it has within it an undercurrent of racism and violence. ” Here’s a look at how four presidents have invoked Jackson’s complicated legacy. Roosevelt, a Republican and later a member of the Progressive Party, visited the mansion on Oct. 22, 1907, and reportedly coined the phrase “good to the last drop” after being served a cup of Maxwell House coffee there. It’s not clear what Roosevelt said about Jackson that day, but in his 1913 autobiography he cited “Good King Andrew,” as he put it, and Lincoln as the progenitors of the modern idea of the president as a strong leader who sets the nation’s agenda. (Roosevelt also admired Alexander Hamilton, another strong nationalist, for the similar reasons.) “Roosevelt really did change the office, and the two people he cites from the 19th century are Jackson and Lincoln,” said David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University. “Jackson was a slave owner, and his Indian policy was reprehensible, but he definitely was a fighter for the people, against the moneyed interests,” Mr. Greenberg said. “That’s why Teddy Roosevelt admired him. ” Roosevelt, a Democrat, briefly visited the mansion and the grave site on Nov. 17, 1934, with Eleanor Roosevelt, while they were on their way to their retreat in Warm Springs, Ga. Mrs. Roosevelt also visited Alfred’s Cabin, a former slave cabin that still stands on the property, and the couple went together to Fisk University, an institution. In citing Jackson, Ms. Richardson said, Roosevelt generally spoke not of his racial record and what she called the “incredibly racist version of Manifest Destiny” Jackson promoted, but the idea that the government belong to the people, not the wealthy. “This was around the time that Jackson had gone on the $20 bill,” Ms. Richardson noted. In 1940, at the annual Jackson Day dinner, Roosevelt paid tribute to a “great man”: not “Jackson the Democrat,” he said, “but Jackson the American, who did the big job of his day — to save the economic democracy of the Union for its westward expansion into a great nation, strengthened in the ideals and practice of popular Government. ” (Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, also visited the Hermitage, but before his presidency, when he was the presiding judge of the Jackson County court in Missouri, which was preparing to erect a statue of Jackson. His errand? Truman, a former haberdasher, apparently wanted to measure some of Jackson’s clothes to make sure the statue was the right size, according to information compiled by the Hermitage.) Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, had breakfast at the Hermitage on March 15, 1967, the 200th anniversary of Jackson’s birth, after a tour of Appalachia. In a speech, he acknowledged Jackson’s record as a slaveholder but paid tribute to the “political transformation” he had brought to American democracy, bringing power to the people while emphasizing the indivisibility of the Union, a stance Johnson contrasted with the states’ rights ideology of another Southerner, the secessionist John C. Calhoun. Johnson, a Democrat, also painted an inclusive picture of Jackson’s populism, linking it to his own Great Society agenda. “We are still striving to involve the poor, the deprived, the forgotten American, white and Negro, in the future of their society,” he said. “So the task Jackson set is still undone. ” Julian E. Zelizer, a historian at Princeton, noted that in an address to the Tennessee legislature later that day, Johnson changed tack, talking about the Vietnam War and the need for the kind of “rugged confidence” Jackson had. “He used Jackson the military hawk, not Jackson the populist,” Mr. Zelizer said. “He used it to send a tough signal that victory was possible. ” Reagan visited the Hermitage on March 15, 1982, Jackson’s 215th birthday, and also gave an address to the Tennessee legislature. The country had just fallen into a deep recession, Ms. Richardson said, and Reagan made the case for taking on what he saw as a bloated government. “He’s trying to defend his idea, which wasn’t popular even when he was elected by running on it, that if you get rid of regulations, cut back unions and cut taxes, you’re going to create a magical return to the past,” Ms. Richardson said. Reagan, a Republican, also cited Jackson as one in a line of western heroes, which Ms. Richardson said was “not an accident. ” “He is really deliberately trying to use Jackson to say, ‘Everything I’m trying to do as a movement conservative, I’m doing as someone who is not in step with the Republican Party,’” she said. “He’s saying that being an outsider is really just going back to American tradition. He uses Jackson as an avenue to do that. ” Ms. Richardson added Mr. Trump’s embrace of Jackson, a man many liberals and progressives now hate, was doing something similar, with even more powerful effect. “It’s a way of twisting the knife in people’s guts,” she said. | 1 |
“Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America” A book by Richard Schweid
About a quarter century ago, I taught a film course at UC San Diego. I drove from my home in Los Angeles once a week, returning the same day after my evening class. After one class session, some students requested to see me the next morning because they were unable to make my late afternoon office hours before class. I consented and stayed in San Diego that night.
Failing to find any local friends at that hour, I looked for an inexpensive motel. The clerk at a relatively nearby dump stood behind a glass partition and handed me the room key after I paid the cash-only daily rate. He sternly informed me that no visitors were allowed. The room smelled of cigarettes and looked extremely unappealing. The carpet was filthy and deeply stained. I never removed my socks the entire night. The foul smelling bathroom sink was also stained. I slept fitfully on the threadbare, unwashed sheets and kept the bathroom light on all night. At 6 a.m., I rose and left, feeling as though I had been released from jail.
Richard Schweid’s remarkable and disconcerting new book, “Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America,” brought back my unpleasant San Diego motel memory. This exceptional work of journalism chronicles the lives of America’s homeless families, focusing dramatically on the plight of the thousands of homeless children, many living for protracted periods in motels eerily similar to my dreadful San Diego “fleabag.” Schweid traveled through a nation that privileged Americans generally try to avoid and deny. These more fortunate Americans are embarrassed, indifferent and sometimes actively hostile to the desperate plight of their hidden neighbors. Schweid’s book is a compelling account of his findings.
Throughout much of the 20th century, the homeless in America consisted primarily of men, often wandering from location to location. As late as 1980, families comprised only 1 percent of the homeless population. That number is now 37 percent, not only a huge increase, but a national catastrophe. Entire families now live in the streets, in cars, in temporary shelters, and often in one miserable motel room, waiting for some permanent relief in the form of a stable apartment. Schweid examined family homelessness in five U.S. cities: Nashville, Tennessee; Boston; Fairfax, Virginia; Portland, Oregon; and Trenton, New Jersey. He lived in the motels he described and listened carefully to the families’ stories, the basis for his grim observations and conclusions.
The accounts of family motel stays are the most dramatic feature of the book. Single mothers (and sometimes fathers) with one or more children are greeted by mildewed shower curtains, cigarette stains and lingering odors, cracked mirrors, stained rugs and sheets (often with holes) and other physical indignities, including roaches. Young boys and girls eat only what can be cooked in motel room microwaves and hot plates, often subsisting on the unhealthy fast food options from nearby restaurants and convenience stores. A lack of refrigerator space ensures that sugary beverages and precooked lunchmeats are common; fresh fruits and vegetables are rare or nonexistent in most of these motel settings.
Especially in cold weather states, children can play only in motel corridors, often encountering unsavory residents and visitors with criminal and drug histories and involvements. The children usually wait in these corridors for buses to transport them to schools, which they change with devastating regularity as their families move from motels to shelters and other temporary housing facilities.
All too regularly, families are evicted from these barely habitable motel rooms, invariably for not paying the (exorbitant) rent. Typically, they are locked out and lose their meager possessions. Schweid makes the point with heartbreaking poignancy: “Children’s toys and favorite things were gone forever. Anyone who has ever watched a young child form an attachment to some beat-up raggedy doll, some scrap of material ... will understand that its sudden overnight loss may generate terrible anxiety.”
The results are distressingly predictable. Children residing in these motels (and shelters) frequently act out in school and perform poorly. Physically, they suffer from a multitude of ailments, including ear infections, asthma, skin disorders, dental decay, obesity, depression and many others. Some of these are serious and chronic, and can have lifelong detrimental effects. Failure to address childhood dental problems, for example, often leads to massive tooth loss, gastrointestinal disorders and emotional trauma, among other consequences.
“Invisible Nation” also addresses the plight of homeless families in shelters, many run by local governments and sometimes assisted by churches and other charitable organizations. With minor variations, these shelters are the same in all five cities where Schweid conducted his investigations. The chief difference between shelters and motel rooms is that shelter food is generally better, and sanitary facilities like showers and toilets are generally superior. But privacy is conspicuously lacking, causing even greater stress to homeless parents and children.
A debilitating feature of many of these shelters, moreover, is that their temporary inhabitants must exit the premises early in the morning, forcing them out to the mean urban streets. In Boston, Fairfax, Trenton and Nashville, they can face freezing winter temperatures, while in Portland, they can encounter relentless winter rains. The shelters also impose strict, even punitive rules and regulations, further oppressing the temporary residents. These settings are understandably places of last resort for homeless families, who often have no relatives or friends with whom they can stay. | 0 |
It just goes to show you that you can't rely on a fire extinguisher if you let it go beyond its recharge date. You have to check the tag. | 0 |
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More and more evidence is surfacing that Hillary Clinton and her cronies in the Democratic Party are trying to rig the election. They know they cannot win fair and square with the level of enthusiasm Donald Trump has earned from his supporters, and so they have resorted to illegal measures.
A new video released Saturday shows just how far Hillary and the DNC are willing to go to get her elected. Watch as a California man admits he was offered $300 to vote for the Democratic nominee… DEMS caught paying patients from a halfway house $300 rebate to vote for HRC in CA! pic.twitter.com/qpxgNt6KgR | 0 |
VIDEO : New Powerful Trump ad Targets Hindu and Indian Americans VIDEO : New Powerful Trump ad Targets Hindu and Indian Americans Videos By Amy Moreno October 27, 2016
The America First movement is for ALL AMERICANS .
Contrary to what the North Korea-style government-run propaganda media, whose sole purpose is to spew pro-Hillary rhetoric, anti-Trump lies, and cover up for the most unliked candidate in the history of American elections says, ALL AMERICANS are welcome aboard the Trump Train.
We’re an INCLUSIVE movement, and our online, and “real life” diversity proves that.
In a powerful new ad, Trump reaches out to the Indian and Hindu community who truly love Donald Trump.
Watch the video: This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
Banana Republics: The Baltics' #1 export, Russophobia, is running out of demand... November 22, 2016 - Fort Russ - Ruslan Ostashko, PolitRussia - translated by J. Arnoldski - Dear friends, have you noticed that our opposition which has gone to the Baltic states really loves to to talk about how nice it is for the people there to live in the European Union? Some even periodically praise the local economy which, in contrast to the “torn to shreds gas station,” has long since rushed into the post-industrial era and doesn’t need oil, gas, industry, or even developed agriculture to be prosperous. The inquisitive reader may ask: on what is the foundation of Baltic economic pleasantry based? Indeed, this pleasantry is doubtful, seeing as how the citizens of these countries are fleeing and the economy has yet to recover since the financial crisis. And this is not to mention that numerous officials from the Baltic countries are experiencing a certain pessimism as to the economic future of these countries. Well, okay, let’s assume that there was once such a success story and try to explain on what it was based. If you think about it, something rather interesting is explained here. There is one overriding article in Baltic exports which was not taken into account in any economic checkbook or the reports of the IMF or European Commission. This, of course, is Russophobia. Who needs manufacturing if every day you can just talk about a Russian invasion? Who needs developed agriculture if officials from the Baltics can tell stories about Putin’s plans to seize Riga? Who needs an economy at all if it is more profitable to sell votes at the meetings of European organs of power? In exchange for Russophobia, they can receive diplomatic support, structural funds from the European Union, and the deployment of additional NATO troops. They can even get real money for anti-Russian propaganda, some of which, by the way, makes its way into the hands of the Russian opposition journalists and activists who are so fond of the weather in the Baltic states. Russophobia is an all-around perfect export product. To be produced, it needs only two things: Russia, which will never disappear, and a Baltic official or journalist who complains about Russia, is afraid of Russia, and urgently needs protection from Russia. This is the perpetual motion machine. No wonder many Latvian and Estonian Russophobes thought that they had found a gold mine that never runs out. But now a surprise has come. The demand for Russophobia has fallen with the ascent of Trump. Even the Western champions of Russophobic discourse are preparing to tighten their belts and switch to eating only buckwheat, not to mention their Baltic colleagues. This situation could run the economy of the former “Baltic tigers” and especially the personal futures of many Russophobic politicians into problems more serious than the global financial crisis. The Latin American banana republics had this kind of bad luck when prices fell for bananas, and then political chaos began since they didn’t produce anything other than bananas. Something similar is happening in this case, only it is not the price for bananas that is falling, but the price for Russophobia. Soros and his friends where generous when they had access to the purse of the State Department or US Congress, but they are much less gracious with their own money, so some will have to chew on their tie instead of eating red caviar sandwiches. And some kind of Maidan is not far off, or suddenly some Baltic version of Dodon could win elections. The authorities of our northwestern neighbors have something to be sad about. But what can they do? Those few politicians that kept some common sense are somehow trying to restore economic relations with Russia and are even flying to Moscow, but this looks pathetic. What kind of salvation by Russian transit can there be if Russia has already, for a long time and consciously, been contributing to the creation of port facilities on the Baltic Sea in order to stop paying these Russophobic border states? The squeezing of their products out of the Russian market is only a matter of time, and this is an inevitable process, just as inevitable as the death of Baltic transit. And what will happen then? Then they will beg us to take the Baltic states. They will beg for a pro-Russian Maidan to be organized, and local officials will even want to lead it. But this won’t happen. Everyone will understand that being with Russia in a single economic space is something that has to be earned. Thus, the Baltic Russophobes have little hope. Follow us on Facebook! | 0 |
The former Texas middle school teacher who admittedly became pregnant by her student was sentenced to 10 years in prison. [On Friday, Alexandria Vera, 25, returned to court for sentencing. State District Judge Michael McSpadden heard brief arguments from both sides before rendering his decision, the Houston Chronicle reported. She will be eligible for parole after serving five years. Alexandria Vera, middle school teacher impregnated by 8th grade student sentenced to 10 years in prison #khou11 pic. twitter. — Lauren Talarico (@KHOULauren) January 13, 2017, In November, Vera pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child. She originally faced 25 years to life in prison under a count of continuous sexual abuse of a child. Her guilty plea capped any potential jail time she may serve at 30 years. The deal she struck could have allowed Vera to serve a deferred adjudication sentence, a type of probation that would leave her without a criminal record if she completed it successfully. Vera remained free on $100, 000 bail since surrendering herself to authorities in June, although she had to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet and abide by other restrictions, including steering clear of schools and having no contact with the teen who purportedly impregnated her. Over the summer, though, she landed back in McSpadden’s court for violating a condition of her bond agreement. She returned home from shopping later than her curfew. Court documents revealed Vera met the boy during a 2015 summer school session at Stovall Middle School where she taught. Prior to any sexual misconduct, the inappropriate relationship started over social media. The boy tried to reach her on Instagram. Vera later messaged him after he missed class. This led to the student asking for her phone number. Vera claimed the boy’s parents supported the relationship and were even happy when she reportedly announced her pregnancy to them. She believed she did nothing wrong because she just fell in love, according to court documents. She allegedly had an abortion once school authorities began questioning her about the improper relationship. Speculation swirled that the boy’s parents might face the criminal charge of failure to report child abuse. They were not charged but officials ordered them to undergo therapy and attend parenting classes. The boy, now remains in foster care through, at least, August. Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter. | 1 |
VIPS Memos November 13, 2016
Donald Trump’s win shook up the System but the empire is already striking back as the same-ole powers-that-be seek to “guide” Trump back to establishment-friendly and pro-war policies that many voters rejected, writes Gilbert Doctorow.
By Gilbert Doctorow
The immediate impact of Donald Trump’s victory among those of us who favored his candidacy over Hillary Clinton’s was triumphalism on the day after. This euphoric mood was very well captured on a special edition of the Russia Today’s “Cross Talk” show, which registered an audience of more than 110,000 on-line viewers, a number which is rare if not unprecedented.
But much of the potential for positive change which came with Trump’s victory will be dissipated if all of us do not do what Barack Obama and Donald Trump did a couple of days ago: reach out to shake hands with political opponents, who will remain opponents, and nonetheless move forward together in a constructive manner. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaking to the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)
If left to its own devices, the U.S. foreign policy establishment will continue doing what it has done since Nov. 8: wishing away the whole Trump victory. At present, these think tank scholars and major media columnists are in denial, as we see from op-eds published by The New York Times and other anti-Trump mainstream media. They question his mandate for change and his ability to execute change. They offer to hold his hand, bring him to his senses and ensure that his election (at least regarding its message about trying to cooperate with Russia on shared goals such as fighting terrorism) was in vain.
These spokesmen for the Establishment choose to ignore that Trump’s first moves after winning were to reward those in his party who had first come out in support of him and who stood by him in the worst days of the campaign, of which there were many. I note the rising stars of Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, among others. This makes it most improbable that he will also reward those who did everything possible to stymie his candidacy, first, and foremost the neoconservative and liberal interventionist foreign policy loudmouths.
Perhaps to comfort themselves, perhaps to confuse us, these foreign policy elitists say Trump is interested mainly in domestic affairs, in particular rebuilding American infrastructure, canceling or modifying Obamacare. They call him an isolationist and then fill in the content of his supposed isolationism to suit their purposes. They propose to give him a speed course on why continued global hegemony serves America’s interests and the interests of his electorate.
Yet, the record shows that Trump formulated his plans for U.S. military and foreign policy explicitly during the campaign. He said he would build up the U.S. military potential. He spoke specifically of targets for raising the number of men and women under arms, raising the construction of naval vessels, modernizing the nuclear arsenal. These plans are cited by the Establishment writers today as contradicting Trump’s thinking about getting along with all nations, another major motif of his campaign rhetoric. They propose to help him iron out the contradictions.
Explaining Trump’s Contradictions
But the answer to the apparent contradictions could well be that Trump was saying what he had to say to get elected. Consistency has not been at the center of Trump’s style. I maintain that the apparent contradictions were intentionally planted by Trump to secure the support of unsophisticated patriots while a very well integrated program for the way forward has been there in his pocket all the time. A sign supporting Donald Trump at a rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016 (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
Expanding U.S. military might will cost a lot, at the same time Trump has said he will not raise taxes nor raise debt. This means, in fact, reallocation of existing budgets. The most obvious place to start will be to cut back on the number of U.S. military bases abroad, which now number more than 600 and which consume $600 billion annually in maintenance costs.
The Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky recently described this spending rather colorfully when reassuring his compatriots that the U.S. is not as powerful as it appears. Said Zhirinovsky, a lot of the Pentagon’s allocations go to buying toilet paper and sausages, not military muscle as such. Moreover, the bases abroad tend to create local, regional and global grievances against the United States that, in turn, increase the need for still more bases and military expenditures.
If Trump begins by cutting back on the bases now surrounding and infuriating the Russian Federation, he would take a big step towards relaxation of international tensions, while saving money for his other security and domestic priorities.
Trump also has said he will require U.S. allies to pay more for their defense. This particularly concerns Europe, which is prosperous, but not carrying its weight in NATO despite years of exhortations and cajoling by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The U.S. pays two-thirds of the NATO’s bills. Trump has declared that this is unacceptable.
The Pentagon budget represents a bit over 4 percent of GDP, whereas in Europe only several countries have approached or crossed the 2% of GDP minimum that the U.S. and NATO officials have called for. As a practical matter, given the ongoing stagnation of the European economies, widespread heavy indebtedness and the ongoing national budgets operating at deficits that exceed the guidelines of the European Central Bank, it is improbable (read impossible) for Europe to step up to bat and meet U.S. demands.
This will then justify the U.S. withdrawal from NATO that figures at the sidelines of the wish list of Trump supporters, not isolationism per se. Trump supporter and military analyst Andrew Bacevich wrote recently in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. may well pull out of NATO completely in the early 2020s.
As a fallback, the Establishment spokesmen speculate on how the President-elect will be taken in hand by members of his own party and by their own peers so that his wings are clipped and his directional changes in U.S. foreign and defense policy are frustrated before they are even rolled out during the 100 days of the new administration.
Very likely, that same foreign policy establishment will resume its howling in the wind if they are proven wrong after Trump’s Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, and he proceeds precisely down the path of policies that he clearly enunciated during the campaign.
Why do I think that Trump as President will follow through on the foreign policy promises of Trump, the candidate? There is a simple explanation. His announced policies regarding accommodation with Russia, renunciation of “regime change” as a U.S. government priority abroad and the like were all set out by Trump during the campaign in the full knowledge they would bring him lots of well-organized criticism and gain him few votes, given the electorate’s focus on domestic policy issues.
He also knew that his positions, including condemning President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, would cost him support within his own party leaders, which is what happened. He even weathered Hillary Clinton calling him a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the third presidential debate and other McCarthyistic innuendo portraying him as some kind of Manchurian Candidate.
A Clash over Wars
Thus, we may assume that once he is in the saddle, he will not shy away from implementing these clearly stated policies. The impending clash between a foreign policy establishment with its supercilious attitude toward the new incumbent in the Oval Office and a determined President pulling in the other direction will surely create political tension and prompt many angry op-eds in Washington. Seen through a night-vision device, U.S. Marines conduct a combat logistics patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 21, 2013. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Anthony L. Ortiz)
Accordingly, I have some constructive recommendations both to my fellow Trump supporters and to Trump’s opponents in the foreign policy establishment and mass media. I earnestly ask the editors of Foreign Affairs magazine and their peer publications serving the international-relations expert community to finally open their pages and give equal time for high quality contributions by followers of the “realist” school, who have been systematically excluded over the past several years as the New Cold War set in.
I address the same message to the mainstream electronic and print media, which has engaged in a New McCarthyism by blacklisting commentators whose views run counter to the Washington consensus and also publicly denigrating them as “tools of Putin.”
To put it in terms that anyone in the Russian affairs field and even members of the general public will understand, we need a six-to-nine month period of Glasnost, of open, free and very public debate of all those key international security issues which have not been discussed due to the monopoly power of one side in the argument.
I am calling for genuinely open debate, which allows for opinions that clash with the bipartisan “group thinks” that have dominated the Democratic and Republican elites. This concerns firstly the question of how to manage relations with Russia and China. Without any serious consideration of where the West’s escalating hostilities have been leading, we have been plunging forward blindly, stumbling towards a potential nuclear war — precisely because alternative policy views were kept out.
For those of us who have been part of the silenced opposition to the Washington consensus of the Bush and Obama years, we must engage with our intellectual opponents. Only in this way can we strengthen our reasoning powers and the quality of our policy recommendations so that we are fully prepared to deal with the fateful questions under review.
Gilbert Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His most recent book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015. | 0 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Government Mark 4th Anniversary Of Savita Halappanavar’s Death With Shrug Of The Shoulders November 2, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , POLITICS Share 0 Add Comment
THE FOURTH anniversary of the death of Savita Halappanavar was marked by the government this year in an understated ceremony in Dublin Castle, WWN can confirm.
Mrs. Halappanavar’s passing on the 28th of October 2012 due to complications arising from a septic miscarriage shocked the Nation, caused an international outcry and prompted an outpouring of grief and a strident belief that Ireland needed to act to protect and safeguard women if they required an abortion rather than telling them ‘this is a Catholic country’.
Remarking on the amazing progress that has been made in medical practice and human rights in Ireland in the years since the tragic death of the 31-year-old, the government shrugged its shoulders, presumably in an effort to convey to the public that ‘well, you know, these things happen’.
“Time does fly, we’d almost forgotten, shame you lot can’t do the same” the government confirmed, alluding to the fact the Irish public is no hurry to forget what happened.
Convening in a large reception room in Dublin Castle, members of the cabinet acknowledged the fact that two senior midwifery experts hired to examine and implement improvements in maternity services in the west in the wake of Mrs. Halappanavar’s death had resigned, with their resignations linked to the frustration at the slow pace of reform in the services.
“Hmm, eh, yeah, well…” a spokesperson for the government revealed before trailing off while scanning the room for the nearest exit.
The government posed awkwardly for a photo and were encouraged to shrug their shoulders in order to reinforce official government policy on women’s rights.
“The shrugging would have been more pronounced,” admitted one minister, “but it can’t be said we haven’t acted on this, 4 years later and we’ve a system that is so dysfunctional people hired to reform it resign as they are stonewalled and then we at cabinet level have committed to maybe, possibly doing something in a few years if the Citizens Assembly return a verdict we obviously don’t want”. | 0 |
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Hillary Clinton’s trouble staying sober has been just one of the many scandals she has faced this election season, and a newly-surfaced video isn’t going to help her reputation for being a complete lush.
The footage was captured and shared by New Jersey Senator Cory Booker ahead of a June 1st rally in Newark, New Jersey, where Clinton appeared with rock musician Jon Bon Jovi.
In the short clip, the Democratic nominee appears unusually jovial, singing and dancing for no apparent reason, as if she had just had a few drinks in the middle of the day.
See it for yourself:
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) June 1, 2016
As The Political Insider points out, it might be okay for your average American to toss a few back in the middle of the day, but it isn’t fine when an alcoholic wants to be leader of the free world.
Do you think Hillary has a drinking problem? Leave your opinion in the comments section! | 0 |
Donald Trump the Hero of the Common Man 03.11.2016 In America, many people had given up on politics. Our Congress was bought and sold by lobbyists. Both parties seemed to be the same, the same neocon bombings of other countries. The same media spin. They felt they had been left behind. The corporations and profits were all that mattered, not the common man. They were almost resigned to the fact that they had no say anymore and that 'we the people ' was a saying and the meaning long forgotten as government got bigger and bigger,and became a Gigantic Leviathan sucking off the working-class people. Then, along came Trump. A businessman who was a showman. A thin skinned bully who mocked those he did not like. But, he was different. He was not a politician. He was not beholden to the corporate elite. In fact, the corporate elite despised him. Their media eviscerated him at every turn. He was mocked, scored, his every word grotesquely twisted to sound nothing like what he originally meant. Font Size They loved him, he loved them back And, yet, the people loved him. And, he loved them back. Rally after rally they came by the thousands to cheer their hero on. Hated by the elites and loved by the masses Trump himself began to change. Once only wanting to be a part of the elite crowd, Trump began to fall in love with his crowds. He saw himself as the hero of the common man and it felt good. Trump began to speak out against the elites who had bought and sold Congress. The said he wanted to "drain the swamp" and put term limits on professional politicians. The people loved him even more. The media painted and painted but... The media, controlled by the corporate elites continued to paint Mr. Trump as a womanizer, a racist, a xenophobe, and in cahoots with (gasp) Russia. To the Hillary Clinton supporters he could do not right and everything he said was suspect. He was vilified into the worst monster imaginable. No one in their right mind could possibly support him and those that did were themselves nothing but uneducated racists. But, Trump was not a racist. In 1885, he bought Mar-a-Lago. An estate in Palm Beach that he was going to turn into a chi chi club. Back then in the United States the tony clubs were segregated. Only white WASPS were members of the fancy clubs. Donald Trump said that he wanted his club to be diverse and he wanted it to be open to everyone. People told him he would lose money and no one would join, but he did not care he wanted it to be diverse. And, so it was. Mar-a-Lago was one of the first primer clubs open to everyone in Palm Beach, Florida. Hardly the actions of a racist. To those that love Trump he is the patriarch of a beautiful family. His children are beautiful and successful in their own right. He is a successful businessman who turned a million dollar loan into business ventures that made him a multi-bullionaire. They see a man who can misspeak, who can lash out, but they know his bark is worse than his bite. They see a man who isn't the greatest orator of all time and shoots from the hip, but they aren't so bothered by this because one of their loves for him is the fact that he isn't a politician with the rehearsed rhetoric. They see a man who's heart is in the right place. A man who loves America and her people. Trump is a patriot But, most of all, they saw a man who is a patriot. A man who is capable of bullying where bullying has never been done before, but maybe it was time a dominant male started calling out the evil that had befallen America. A man who wasn't afraid to call out the media bias, call out politicians in their corrupt dealings with wealthy donors. Wasn't afraid to say we needed to vet Muslim terrorists and not let them into their land. A man who was not afraid to say we need a wall on the Mexican border to stop the insane illegal immigration into America. Trump had become the voice of the common man! The voice of the silent majority that didn't think it mattered anymore. He has single-handedly destroyed the hold the corporations and elites had on his party. He has confounded all of the media, and all of every insider involved in politics. He wants to bring back the voice of the people who view him as their prince. The only person strong enough to take on the entire cabal. He has vanquished the Republican party. He is now tied in the polls with Hillary Clinton the mouthpiece and pasty of the corporate elitists and a neocon war monger. It is the prayer of Trump supporters, the common men and women in America, that their hero triumphs this week and wins in the most historic upset of our century. Nancy O'Brien Simpson Ms. Simpson was a radio personality in New York. She was a staff writer for The Liberty Report. A PBS documentary was done on her activism for human rights. She is a psychotherapist and political commentator. | 0 |
UN Plan for World Government The “New Urban Agenda”
Have you heard of the “New Urban Agenda”? You haven’t? Well, don’t worry about it then. After all, what you don’t know can’t hurt you—right? Wrong! The United Nations has a plan for global governance. If you don’t know what global governance means, let’s just call it what it really is—world government. The overall plan is called Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development defines the goals that all nations should attain by 2030. The plan focuses largely on cities since a large percentage of the world’s population now lives in cities; thus the New Urban Agenda. The UN has a completely developed plan for world government and intends for every person on earth to be under its control. Will the United States become a part of the coming one-world government? That may depend on how we vote on November 8th. We’ll explain further on today’s edition of End of the Age. | 0 |
in: Government , War Propaganda , World News The neocon Washington Post features their extremist views, urging greater war on a sovereign independent nation threatening no one. Former State Department official/current Wilson Center vice president Aaron David Miller challenged Hillary, saying “(s)he’s on the hook to deliver” as America’s next president. If she…back(s) down…what explanation can she use?” The Center for American Progress, founded by her campaign chairman John Podesta, called for greater use of US air power in Syria – on the phony pretext of protecting civilians. Throughout her campaign, Hillary supported escalated conflict in Syria, not resolving it diplomatically. Expect her to follow through once in office as Obama’s successor, a near-certainty as things now stand. WaPo editors gave retired US Marine General John Allen and Middle East Institute senior fellow Charles Lister feature op-ed space . Both extremists urge “bring(ing) Syria’s Assad and his backers to account now” – their arguments based on a litany of deception, misinformation and Big Lies, commentaries WaPo features repeatedly, suppressing opposing viewpoints urging peace and stability. Allen and Lister: “For 5½ years, the Syrian government has tortured, shot, bombed and gassed its own people with impunity, with the resulting human cost clear for all to see: nearly 500,000 dead and 11 million displaced. Since Russia’s military intervention began one year ago, conditions have worsened…” Fact: Syria is Obama’s war, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton, entirely responsible for horrific carnage and atrocities – using ISIS and other terrorist foot soldiers, supported by US-led “coalition” air power. Fact: Russia’s intervention in September 2015 changed the dynamic on the ground – a vital campaign to preserve Syrian sovereign independence and territorial integrity, what neocons like Allen and Lister want destroyed, so America can claim another imperial trophy and keep the Middle East pot boiling, Iran the next target. Allen and Lister: “While subjecting his people to unspeakable medieval-style brutality, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sabotaged diplomatic initiatives aimed at bringing a lasting calm to his country.” “The most recent such diplomatic scheme was trashed not just by Assad, but also Russia, whose aircraft were accused of subjecting a UN-mandated aid convoy to a ferocious two-hour attack in September.” Fact: Syrians overwhelmingly support Assad, reelecting him democratically in June 2014, wanting no one else leading them. Fact: He’s an eminently decent man, concerned about his nation and welfare of his people, doing his job responsibly, defending them from US-imported death squads. Fact: He’s no “medieval-style brut(e),” a disgraceful Big Lie claiming it – he and millions of Syrians victimized by US imperial viciousness, its genocidal mass slaughter and destruction, what neocons like Allen and Lister support. Fact: Clear evidence shows US-supported terrorists were responsible for attacking and destroying most of a UN humanitarian convoy for beleaguered eastern Aleppo residents. Allen and Lister disgracefully blamed Russia and Syria for war crimes committed by America, its rogue partners and terrorist foot soldiers in Aleppo and elsewhere nationwide. They called for more assertive US action, claiming “(t)he world will not forgive us for our inaction” – while hyping the myth of (nonexistent) moderate rebels waging (nonexistent) civil war against a sitting government both writers want toppled illegally, US-controlled puppet rule replacing it. Allen and Lister: “The credibility of the United States as the leader and defender of the free world must be salvaged from the horrific devastation of Syria.” Fact: Syria was at peace with its neighbors until America and its rogue allies attacked it preemptively without just cause – raping and destroying the country, massacring its people, displacing half its population internally or externally. Allen and Lister urge escalating conflict, not resolving it responsibly – nor holding war criminals in America and its allied countries accountable for high crimes too horrendous to ignore. Submit your review | 0 |
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have evidence that Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York Assembly, engaged in extramarital relationships with two women connected to his position in Albany, according to newly unsealed court documents. The women were not identified in the papers, which were released on Friday, but one of them lobbied Mr. Silver “on a regular basis on behalf of clients who had business before the state,” the government said in a memorandum to a judge. In the case of the other woman, prosecutors said, Mr. Silver “used his official position” to help her get a state job, “over which he exercised a particularly high level of control. ” The government said it wanted to use evidence of the affairs at Mr. Silver’s sentencing, most likely to counter testimonials from the defense that he was a man of good character, strong ethics and integrity. The alleged relationships also lent credence to the notion that the former speaker had long engaged in questionable behavior, using his influence to dole out preferential treatment in return for favors. The court papers added a new and unexpected dimension to Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who became one of the most feared and powerful politicians in New York State. With one of the two women, for example, he kept a separate cellphone to talk primarily to her it was not in his name and bills were not sent to him, the memo said. The allegations were in sealed court papers that federal prosecutors in Manhattan first presented to a judge last fall, in hopes of being allowed to use the material in Mr. Silver’s trial on federal corruption charges. The judge, Valerie E. Caproni of Federal District Court, did not unseal the materials at the time, but the issue arose again after the trial ended, when the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, asked to be allowed to use the materials at Mr. Silver’s sentencing, which is scheduled for May 3. “I view this as of a piece with the crimes for which Mr. Silver stands convicted,” Judge Caproni said on Thursday in court, where she said she would unseal the materials. “Not exactly the same no one is suggesting a quid pro quo, but of a piece of a misuse of his public office, and that’s why I think it’s relevant. ” The judge’s decision to make the documents public, with some redactions, followed a vigorous and ultimately unsuccessful legal fight by lawyers for Mr. Silver and the two women to block the release of the materials. The government had continued to press for the unsealing, as did The New York Times and NBCUniversal, which cited the First Amendment right of access to the courts. Steven F. Molo and Joel Cohen, lawyers for Mr. Silver, said on Friday morning after the release, “These are simply unproven and salacious allegations that have no place in this case or public discussion. ” Manuel Ortega, a lawyer for one of the women, denied the government’s assertion that his client had had an affair with Mr. Silver. He said the government’s “attempt at smearing the defendant with baseless allegations is not an attempt to seek justice, which is the prosecutor’s obligation, but a way to publicly embarrass innocent families and innocent people. ” A lawyer for the other woman, the lobbyist, declined to comment through a spokesman. Mr. Silver, 72, was convicted on Nov. 30 of all seven counts against him, including honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering. The evidence at trial showed that he had obtained nearly $4 million in illicit fees in return for official actions that benefited a cancer specialist at Columbia University and two real estate developers in New York. Mr. Silver, the Assembly speaker for more than two decades, automatically forfeited his seat in the Legislature with his conviction, and faces up to 20 years in prison on six of the seven counts. In seeking to introduce the information last fall, prosecutors noted that after Mr. Silver was charged in January 2015, they had obtained “numerous recordings” on which he could be heard. In one case, Mr. Silver is heard discussing state and private business with a woman, apparently the lobbyist, according to the memo, which is heavily redacted, making it at times difficult to determine which woman he is talking to. In the conversation, Mr. Silver and the woman discussed “their desire to conceal the truth about their relationship from reporters inquiring about extramarital relationships,” and how they should handle such inquiries, the government said. The woman told Mr. Silver that she had been trying to see him urgently because a reporter was calling state legislators, asking whether certain other legislators were having affairs, the memo said. Mr. Silver is heard responding, “I don’t think he caught us,” but he also said that reporters had requested his travel and campaign finance records. He then expressed concern that those materials and telephone records “could reveal their relationship,” prosecutors said. The memo says Mr. Silver said “it was ‘not safe’ for them to be seen together, and that he did not see the press inquiries ‘dissipating for a long time,’” the memo says. In one ruling also unsealed on Friday, Judge Caproni acknowledged that disclosure of the alleged relationships risked greater harm to the women than to Mr. Silver, given that they had not been connected to or named in the prosecution. But the judge ruled that the women were not “entirely ‘innocent’ third parties. ” She added, “Each allegedly had an extramarital affair with a public official and then exploited her relationship with the public official for personal gain. ” Judge Caproni, in ordering the documents released, said on Thursday that the public had an interest “in understanding the whole scenario,” and in what she would be looking at to determine an appropriate sentence for Mr. Silver, who has been married to his wife, Rosa, for roughly 50 years. The allegations, she added, were “not one of his better moments. ” | 1 |
11 Stupid Things Vox.com's Matthew Yglesias Has Said By: Aaron Bandler October 26, 2016
Matt Yglesias of Vox has always been a gold mine of comedy fodder, given his penchant for saying things that are mind-bogglingly asinine. Apparently Yglesias agrees with this sentiment: Matt Yglesias deleted something like 30,000 tweets yesterday. Clearly a man proud of his history of astute analysis and voxplanations.
Fortunately, the Internet is forever and all of the stupid things that Yglesias has said can still be found and mocked mercilessly.
Here are 11 things Yglesias has said that are incredibly dumb.
1. Yglesias was convinced that people would love Obamacare. That is, until he didn't: . @mattyglesias Obamacare marker - which was solid as of 15 minutes ago - appears to no longer be markering pic.twitter.com/a0EyXImI8g — Omri Ceren (@cerenomri) October 26, 2016
His 2013 piece is still available though, and in it he whines about how supposedly "the media, for non-ideological reasons, is just massively biased toward negativity about this kind of thing." Yglesias also links to another piece of his in which he claimed that "when Obamacare becomes the status quo, people will still be happy with the status quo quo and easy to frighten."
In other words, Yglesias felt that the plebs would eventually succumb to his way of thinking. That all fell by the wayside when the Obama administration admitted that premiums were set to increase by an average of 25 percent.
2. Yglesias made a racist comment toward former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). In a 2013 tweet that is now deleted, Yglesias wrote, "Is Bobby Jindal’s reputation for intelligence anything other than ethnic stereotyping?"
Yglesias doubled down on his nasty comment when he received backlash, tweeting: "Oh, fun. Conservative twitter is in bogus outrage mode."
Eventually, Yglesias backed down, tweeting: "For the record, now that I know more about Jindal’s life it’s clear that he’s a very smart man who just says lots of very dumb stuff."
The irony of Yglesias saying this was not lost on Twitter: Good thing you don't say dumb stuff. MT @mattyglesias It’s clear that Jindal’s a very smart man who just says lots of very dumb stuff. — jon gabriel (@exjon) June 18, 2013
3. Yglesias once ranted against "dumb Jewish politicians." The leftist pundit wrote a ThinkProgress piece in 2009 that was seriously titled "Dumb Jewish Politicians," in which Yglesias highlighted a passage from Jonathan Chait, who wrote in the New Republic that then-Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) had to be stupid for not supporting the public option.
"I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers," Chait wrote. "Trust me, it’s not true. If Senator Smith from Idaho was angering Democrats by spewing uninformed platitudes, most liberals would deride him as an idiot. With Lieberman, we all suspect it’s part of a plan. I think he just has no idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t care to learn"
Yglesias agreed:
I’ve long held a related theory about Eric Cantor.
Anyways, this reminds me that at a meeting this morning I pitched the idea of trying to do health reform in a secret Christmas morning session that only Jewish Senators would attend. There’s a whole bunch — Boxer, Cardin, Feingold, Feinstein, Franken, Kohl, Lautenberg, Levin, Lieberman, Sanders, Schumer, Specter, and Wyden. It’s a very progressive bunch and Lieberman could easily be outvoted
4. Yglesias advocated for ending time zones. Seriously. In what was a typical example of Vox being a waste of space, Yglesias wrote a 2014 piece titled "The case against time zones: They're impractical & outdated." Yglesias pontificated:
Northern Idaho is connected via I-90 to Spokane and Seattle to its west, but not to Boise to its south so the Couer d'Alene area is on Pacific Time rather than Mountain Time. India has broken with the general scheme and adopted a half-hour staggered time zone so as to place the entire country on one time.
Yet while these zig-zags and 30-minute zones destroy the pristine geometry of railroad time, they serve a very practical purpose. It is genuinely annoying to schedule meetings, calls, and other arrangements across time zones. The need to constantly specify which time zone you're talking about is a drag. Commuting across time zones would be more annoying still, which is why the suburbs of Chicago that are located in Indiana use Illinois' Central Time rather than Indianapolis' Eastern Time.
But the ultimate solution to this problem is not a lot of ad hoc deviations. It's to shift the world to one giant time zone.
Ygleasias then called for "One time to rule them all"–a phrase that prompted J.R.R. Tolkien to weep in his grave–and then wrote this doozy:
If the whole world used a single GMT-based time, schedules would still vary. In general most people would sleep when it's dark out and work when it's light out. So at 23:00, most of London would be at home or in bed and most of Los Angeles would be at the office. But of course London's bartenders would probably be at work while some shift workers in LA would be grabbing a nap. The difference from today is that if you were putting together a London-LA conference call at 21:00 there'd be only one possible interpretation of the proposal. A flight that leaves New York at 14:00 and lands in Paris at 20:00 is a six-hour flight, with no need to keep track of time zones. If your appointment is in El Paso at 11:30 you don't need to remember that it's in a different time zone than the rest of Texas.
Pejman Yousefzadeh explained just how stupid Yglesias's time zone piece was, writing at Ricochet : "I grant you that there are times when confusion does take place, but seriously, who cares? Is befuddlement regarding time zones really such a pressing issue that Matthew Yglesias has to take to writing an article demanding that we abolish them? Don’t the people at Vox have anything better to write about?"
Apparently they don't.
5. Yglesias doesn't understand Florida's geography very well. Yglesias wrote a short blurb in The Atlantic in 2007, in which he began thinking aloud about the city of Miami.
"I'd been interested to know what, if anything, is legally or practically preventing the city from just expanding further and further west if anyone happens to know," Yglesias said.
People immediately pointed the obvious answer: Miami couldn't do so because there was this thing called a swamp–most of which is The Everglades National Park–causing such development to be difficult to accomplish.
"Yes, yes, commenters I know it's a freaking swamp but there's plenty of development on ex-swampland in Florida -- hence all the canals and weird-looking lakes," an exasperated Yglesias wrote in an update.
Except that the land is not "ex-swampland," it's an actual swamp . Maybe Yglesias shouldn't write a blurb that involves him thinking aloud.
6. Yglesias thinks that lying is perfectly fine...if you're a politician. Yglesias found himself getting smacked around on Twitter after he advocated for high-speed rail advocates to provide an "unrealistically optimistic" projection about the number of riders that will use the boondoggle program to obtain funding from the government.
"For better or for worse, that’s politics," Yglesias wrote at ThinkProgress .
On Twitter, Yglesias attempted to justify it by writing: "Fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes."
And yet, Yglesias had the temerity to accuse journalist Eli Lake of being dishonest on Twitter.
Yglesias must have realized how badly he put himself in a Catch-22 when he told the Daily Caller to "go f*** yourself" when they tried to interview him about the Twitter incident.
7. Yglesias once hailed the Department of Veteran Affairs as a healthcare model the country should emulate. The Federalist 's Sean Davis pointed to Yglesias writing in 2009 that the VA was "producing the highest quality care in the country. Their turnaround points the way toward solving America’s health-care crisis." Yglesias also tweeted at GOP chairman Reince Priebus in 2013, "Will @Reince be explaining the evils of socialized medicine to veterans?" This tweet was also deleted, and for good reason, since the VA has caused 307,000 veteran deaths due to "systemic" problems with the agency.
8. Yglesias doesn't understand the purpose of the Senate. Yglesias wrote the following for ThinkProgress in 2009, per the Guardian :
If you add together the two Republican Senators from Wyoming with the one from Alaska, one from South Dakota, one from New Hampshire, two from Maine, two from Idaho, two from Nebraska, one from Nevada, two from Utah, two from Kansas, two from Mississippi, one from Iowa, two from Oklahoma, two from Kentucky, one from Louisiana, two from South Carolina, and two from Alabama, the 28 of them collectively represent (on a system in which you attribute half the population of a given state to a senator) 11.98 percent of the American population. Meanwhile, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein together represent 11.95 percent of the American population.
Now of course Texas is also a big state (though at 7.81 percent of the population it's a lot smaller than California) and there are small states (like Vermont and North Dakota) that have two Democratic Senators. So the point here isn't a narrowly partisan one, though the wacky apportionment of the Senate does have a partisan valence. The point is that this is an unfair and bizarre way to run things. If you consider that the mean state would contain two percent of the population, we have just 34 Senators representing the above-average states even though they collectively contain 69.15 percent of the population. The other 66 Senators represent about 30 percent of the people. If the Iranians were to succeed in overthrowing their theocracy and set about to write a new constitution, nobody in their right mind would recommend this system to them.
In three paragraphs of rambling, incoherent nonsense, Yglesias missed the fact that the purpose of having two senators representing each state was so states with smaller populations would be properly represented and not have their interests swallowed up by states with larger populations.
9. Yglesias doesn't understand America's financial system. Yglesias showed his ignorance of the issue when he wrote in a 2013 Slate column that there were "far far far too many banks" in the country, as there were 6,891 at the time. Yglesias bloviated that all these small banks were somehow dangerous:
1. They are poorly managed: You know how the best and brightest of Wall Street royally screw up sometimes? This doesn't get better when you drill down to the less-bright and not-as-good guys. It gets worse. And since small banks finance themselves almost entirely with loans from FDIC-ensured depositors, nobody is watching the store. In effect, the well-managed banks are being taxed to subsidize the poorly managed ones. The dubious decision-making doesn't get as complicated as what you see on Wall Street—it's mostly just classic boom-and-bust pro-cyclical commercial real estate loans—but it creates all the same problems. 2. They can't be regulated: Since these banks are so small, they could be easily driven out of business by high regulatory compliance costs. So since American public policy is perversely committed to preserving them, small banks regularly get various kinds of carve-outs from regulations. And once the carve-outs exist, they create pressure for extension further up the food chain. Other times the compliance issues of small firms become a reason to simply not do tight regulation. 3. They can't compete: If you want the JPMorgan Chases and Bank of Americas of the world to be held to account, you need both regulation and competition. But a bank serving a handful of rural counties or a single midsized city doesn't offer any real competition. Having a large share of America's banking sector tied up in tiny firms only makes it easier for a handful of big boys to monopolize big-time finance.
Davis debunked Yglesias's argument, which was devoid of citations and falsely claimed that there haven't been any new banks formed in recent years (there were at least four in 2013.)
"Yglesias' arguments are so poorly reasoned and so poorly supported that it leads one to question whether his post was thoughtlessly regurgitated from anti-community bank talking points promoted by the big banks ('You guys, the Wall Street banks that nearly destroyed America aren’t the problem. Small community banks where bankers actually know the borrowers are the real problem. Don’t worry about the facts. Just go with it.')," Davis wrote in The Federalist . "I'm actually at a loss to come up with a more charitable explanation."
10. Yglesias thinks that black conservatives are a recent phenomenon. After reading a review of a Booker T. Washington biography, Yglesias started thinking about "'black conservative' political tradition," prompting him to write in a 2009 ThinkProgress post, "It's only extremely recently that the idea of an African-American aligning himself, à la Clarence Thomas, with the mainstream conservative movement in America could be remotely possible. But even so, that didn’t mean there was no ideological conflict in black politics or that general rightist sentiments somehow didn’t exist."
This is patently false, as Damon Root explained in Reason :
Actually, the great Harlem Renaissance author and journalist George Schuyler—who was known as the “black H.L. Mencken”—published “general rightist sentiments” long before Clarence Thomas came on the scene, including Schuyler’s unambiguously titled 1966 autobiography Black and Conservative. And the celebrated novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston both endorsed conservative Sen. Robert A. Taft in the 1952 presidential election and repeatedly attacked FDR’s New Deal...
11. Yglesias expressed joy when Andrew Breitbart died. Following Breitbart's death, Yglesias tweeted : "Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart [sic] dead."
This tweet has also been deleted, and for good reason–celebrating the death of someone just because of political differences is worse than stupid, it's ghoulish, vile and reprehensible. And Slate defended Yglesias, stating that he "is a very passionate journalist and Slate values that passion."
Apparently Slate believes that "passion" trumps basic human decency and a reasonable IQ level, and Yglesias certainly does not possess the latter two qualities. | 0 |
Donald J. Trump on Sunday offered a muddled explanation of his views about the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia and its continued efforts to undermine Ukraine’s control of other parts of the country, and he amplified his earlier suggestion that, if elected president, he might recognize Russia’s claim and end sanctions against it. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Trump said that if he were president, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would not send his forces into Ukraine. He then backpedaled when Mr. Stephanopoulos pointed out that Russian troops had been there for nearly two years. “He’s not going into Ukraine, O. K. just so you understand,” Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, said when the issue came up. “He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want. ” “Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Mr. Stephanopoulos interrupted. “O. K. well, he’s there in a certain way,” Mr. Trump replied. “But I’m not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime, he’s going away. He take — takes Crimea. ” Interpreting Mr. Trump’s statements — what he understands about the current status of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, and how it would change in a Trump administration — is difficult given the fractured nature of the exchange. But they were significant because Mr. Trump has seemingly embraced Mr. Putin, repeatedly called for better relations with Russia and shown an unwillingness to condemn Mr. Putin for his aggressive actions against Russia’s neighbors and its crackdowns on freedoms at home. Questions have been raised about the watering down of a section of the Republican platform dealing with Ukraine amid evidence that wording to support sending lethal weapons to the Ukrainian government was removed from the text. Not since 1976, when President Gerald Ford committed a major gaffe in one of his debates with Jimmy Carter, declaring that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” has the issue of American support of Eastern European states, both those in NATO and those outside it, emerged as a major presidential campaign issue. It was enormously harmful to Mr. Ford, because his statement seemed to suggest that he did not understand the geopolitics of the region, which his staff denied. Ukraine became a separate nation in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. It steadily flirted with the West and with NATO, and Russian officials feared it would be pulled out of Moscow’s orbit. But a president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was democratically elected in 2010 and remained in power until he was ousted in 2014, ultimately taking up exile in Russia. Mr. Yanukovych had hired a lobbying firm by Paul Manafort, now Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, to improve his image in the West and avoid punishment for veering toward Russia. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 was seen as both a power grab and a land grab by Mr. Putin. It was condemned by the United States and its European allies, which all issued sanctions. Since then, Russian troops, often out of uniform, have been seen, and sometimes killed, in parts of Ukraine where a insurgency has fought the current Ukrainian government. Republicans in Congress have long pressed for more assistance to Ukraine to push back against Mr. Putin, including lethal aid. But all references to giving lethal aid to the Ukrainian government were kept out of the party platform. In early July, a delegate offered a platform amendment to support lethal aid. A delegate for Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, Diana Denman, said in an interview that she had pushed for inclusion of the language. But Ms. Denman said her amendment, as proposed, was never voted on because two men who were observing the panel’s deliberations moved to table the amendment, and suggested that it be discussed later. “They openly said they were hired by the Trump campaign and worked for Mr. Trump,” Ms. Denman said, adding that she did not recall their names. In the final version of the Republican platform, the words about weapons were dropped and replaced by the term “appropriate assistance. ” Mr. Trump acknowledged in the ABC interview that the language had been watered down, but he said he had nothing to do with it. (Mr. Manafort has also said he was unaware of the matter.) “I wasn’t involved in that,” Mr. Trump said. “Honestly, I was not involved. ” But he acknowledged that his supporters were. “They softened it, I heard, but I was not involved,” he said. Mr. Trump went on to argue that Mr. Putin might have been welcome in Crimea, sidestepping the issue of whether the Russian leader had violated the sovereignty of another state to take the territory, where Russia has a major naval base. “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,” Mr. Trump said. “And you have to look at that, also. ” He went on to say, “Ukraine is a mess,” but he put the blame for that on Mr. Obama, not on Mr. Putin. Jake Sullivan, the chief policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, said the assessment reinforced his lack of temperamental fitness for the presidency. “Today he gamely repeated Putin’s argument that Russia was justified in seizing the sovereign territory of another country by force,” Mr. Sullivan said. “This is scary stuff. But it shouldn’t surprise us. ” | 1 |
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Hillary Clinton has barely just lost the presidential election and here she is already getting herself caught in another one of her tangled web of lies.
The day after losing, a picture was posted of her taking her dog out for a walk. The picture was reportedly from a random hiker she ran into and showed that she was getting back to public life, or that’s what she wants you to believe.
Now, I want you to do me a favor and take a very close look at this picture, specifically the “hiker” she met. Memorize her face…
Got it? Okay, good.
Now what I am about to show you is something Hillary Clinton was hoping nobody else would notice. Tell me if the girl in the 2nd picture, taken in the 2000’s, reminds you of anyone:
Yeah, it is the EXACT SAME GIRL!
Her name is Margot Gerster and her mother just happens to be one of the big fundraisers for Hillary. That’s actually where the older picture was taken.
Wow! That doesn’t seem random at all, does it?
It looks like this is yet another example of Hillary Clinton trying to mislead the public using her inner circle and pretending like she doesn’t know them.
All I gotta say is, give it the Hell up, Hillary! You lost, nobody needs to see your “chance encounters” or other promotional propaganda anymore. This is exactly why Americans ended up hating you!
Oh well, I guess you really cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Well, in that case all that’s left to do is share this all across Facebook and the internet and expose yet another one of her Serial Lies! | 0 |
Waking Times
Browsing through history, it’s very clear that the world has undergone many monumental shifts in society that have uprooted it’s very foundation in place of new seed.
A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in approach or underlining assumptions. For example, when Pythagoras proposed that the Earth was round instead of flat, the foundation of science and people’s understanding of the world was completely changed. Similarly, when the Industrial Revolution took place there was a complete shift in manufacturing, lifestyle, and economics.
A paradigm shift can literally shake a society to its core, taking it off its current path and putting it on a brand new one. Though it might appear the opposite in the corporate controlled mainstream news, it appears that the entire world is in the very early stages of a paradigm shift. These shifts take place in many of the worlds most basic elements and redefine how life functions.
Here are 8 signs the world is undergoing a paradigm shift: 1. The Power of the Internet and the Age of Information
The Internet is arguably the greatest invention in the history of man. Never in our known history has man had access to such a broad range of diverse information from all over the world at the tips of his fingers. Many forget that the Internet has only really been commercialized in the west since the early 1990’s and its spread across the world hasn’t even come close to peaking yet. The Internet is undoubtedly giving rise to the Age of Information as people become more awake to what’s really going on in the world.
A multitude of information is now accessible if one knows where to look. People can now learn new skills or hear different versions of the truth in mere minutes. The Internet is not only giving rise to an open access of information, but communication is almost instantaneous all over the world. It is paramount that the Internet remain an open decentralized system in which everyone can freely add and operate if this paradigm shift is to continue. It feeds almost all other shifts. 2. The Ascent Of the Independent Non-Corporate Online Media
Thanks solely to the Internet, the rise in independent journalism has taken off. Alternative media has become an increasingly popular choice for those wishing to stay truly informed, especially younger generations. People are continually switching off cable news ( cable TV all together ), and instead resorting to online sources. While mainstream news is still the number one source of current world events for the masses, the tide is slowly changing as people are awakening to the fact that corporate sponsored media is mostly propaganda and half-truths.
War is becoming much harder to justify as independent journalists have shined the light on what the powers that be never wanted anyone to see. A prime example is the conflict in Syria in which the establishment, despite the lack of popular support, so desperately wanted to start a war that when the rebels they were funding used chemical weapons, it was then blamed on the Assad government to protect their investment and design. Thanks to independent journalists, a war has so far been averted since it was revealed that the U.S. was in bed with the rebel groups and it was the rebels who used the chemical weapons . This new faction of journalism will give peace a legitimate chance as all dirty laundry is now being aired and corrupt alliances exposed. This in turn has allowed many people to deprogram from the countless media they have taken in over the years and see the world through a clearer lens in which the truth is more evident. 3. A Global Monetary Reshuffling
Though it will never be broadcast on mainstream news, the real threat of a U.S. dollar collapse as the world reserve currency is very real. The paradigm of central bank controlled economies that can issue credit and zero percent interest rates through nearly unlimited printing of money backed by nothing is an illusion that is beginning to break down. It’s not just the U.S. dollar that’s under threat, but many other central currencies such as the Euro and Yen. Massive equity bubbles are being blown up by this cheap credit along with massive debt that will be nearly impossible to pay back with the current economies in which only the very elite benefit.
Many countries are waking up to the fact that, like all other bubbles, these bubbles will burst and they are beginning to break away from the dollar. Examples include the buildup of a new central bank in the emerging economy of the BRICS group, the countless countries passing trade agreements in which bypassing the U.S. dollar (including agreements in oil), and the persistent selling of treasury stocks by the Chinese government who quite often are the last resort buyer of U.S. debt. Not only has there been a shift in the pecking order of fiat paper currencies, but decentralized crypto-currencies like Bitcoin are threatening the very system of fiat money and the centralized control a select few elite have on that system through central banks. This would shift power worldwide. 4. The Rise of the Peer-to-Peer Economy
A Peer-to-Peer (P20) Economy is a de-centralized model whereby two individuals interact to buy or sell goods and services directly with each other, without intermediation by a third-party, or without the use of a company or business. We see this being used by companies like Air BnB, Uber, Craigslist, Sidecar, and Dogvacay among others. Often referred to as a sharing economy, there is no centralized control of power, allowing people to more directly profit from their goods/services rather than pay unnecessary middlemen along the way.
This is a trend that is sure to grow as technology makes it easier for people to make it on their own and allows for people to own their means of production and finished goods, instead of just being paid in the production process. The peer-to-peer economy is also possible through the abundance of goods already out there, allowing for goods to be shared and recycled rather than thrown away and reproduced. Not only is the peer-to-peer economy growing, but many young people are ditching the career 9-5 jobs and branching off into independent careers or job hopping . The top down business model in economics has now found a legitimate system in which a decentralized bottom up approach gives the power back to the people. 5. The Shift Towards Renewable Energy
The shift towards renewable energy is a forgone conclusion as renewable energy is the way of the future. In fact, the shift looks to be happening faster than people realize. According to the Global Energy Initiative , “Numerous scenarios projected levels of renewable energy for 2020 that already were surpassed by 2010.” The IEA states that, “In 2012, the world relied on renewable sources for around 13.2% of its total primary energy supply, and in 2013 renewables accounted for almost 22% of global electricity generation.”
With increased technological capabilities along with ever-growing concern over the state of the environment, the world is beginning to not only shift towards renewables, but the power over energy supplies and grids is decentralizing. For example, home solar panels or the new Tesla Powerwall , would enable people to access their own energy directly from the sun without going through middlemen. Another example is a local city like Burlington, VT being the first city in the U.S. to use 100% renewable energy; even whole countries like Paraguay, Iceland and Norway being 100% renewable . Cheap localized energy is on the horizon along with the very real possibility Nikola Tesla once envisioned, which is a world of free energy . 6. A Return to Organic Food
The reemergence of organic food is not only on the rise, but the use of farmers markets and locally grown food is on the rise as well. According to the Non GMO project , “In more than 60 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs .” The rise is so strong that according to the Organic Trade Association, “Supply shortages [of organics] are one of the greatest challenges facing the industry today. Despite continued growth in production, handlers are not able to keep up with demand.”
Thanks in large part to the Internet and non-corporate sponsored research, people are beginning to understand the importance behind knowing exactly what’s in the food one consumes and how it directly correlates to health. This has put mounting pressure on food businesses to adapt. The signs are already evident as Chipotle sees their profits increase while operating completely Non-GMO , while sales giants such as McDonalds see profits continue to decrease amidst health concerns over their food. Many are beginning to truly care what goes into their body and the rise of localized non-organic food in this country is a direct result of this health-conscious shift. 7. The Understanding Of a World of Abundance
As Gandhi famously said, “The world has enough for every man’s needs, but not for every man’s greed.” People are finally awaking to the fact that there is enough to go around, just not with the current systems in place. No one is saying there is enough for everyone to live at current western consumption rates, however with adoption of renewable energy, new forms of decentralized government and economics, and the increase in the usage of technological capabilities, there is more than enough for everyone in the world to live happily. For example, the world produces enough food for 10 billion people, yet many go starving as a result of faulty systems of distribution. Another example is water; there is more than enough water on the planet, but it’s the economic systems that get in the way of technology.
The notion of scarcity has long haunted the systems of government and economics, but now a new paradigm of abundance is beginning to take root in the minds of people. The Venus project is a prime example of an alternative resource based economy in which sustainability and resource supply are taken into account. A world of abundance with zero emission is no longer just a pipe dream, but could very well become a reality as people think in terms of abundance. 8. The Global Consciousness Shift
Finally a consciousness shift is underway in which people are starting to see themselves as more than just individual people operating in an isolated bubble, but instead as a connected piece in the collective consciousness of planet Earth. The Internet, along with the increased capacity for travel, has allowed people from all over the world to connect. So many parts of the global society have become interconnected and people are beginning to take notice of not only their own country, but countries abroad.
Many are beginning to realize that one group of people suffering means everyone is suffering. This interconnection to everything has given rise to practices such as meditation, yoga, and travel, as well as the continued global acceptance towards mind altering organic substances like marijuana and mushrooms . People are beginning to emotionally connect to life all over the world and not just their immediate home and surroundings. This new reality is showing people that there is more to life than money, as connection to all living things is equally, if not more, valuable.
As one can see, the world is very much in the early stages of a shift in consciousness and design. These shifts are leading to a growing decentralization movement in which the power controls of society are taken from the few and given to the many. Obviously, there is a very strong force at play that is fighting against this paradigm shift. This force is fighting for centralization of power in almost all facets of life. There can be no doubt of the presence of this resistance when one examines the ever-increasing wealth and power gap that is out of control in this country.
The actions taken by these elite organizations are getting more radical and desperate by the day. With all that being said, the global paradigm shift has one advantage that I believe will be the game changer, and that’s the will of the people. This is not just the people of a a single country, but internationally, as united global movements such as Occupy Wall street , the Arab Spring, and March Against Monsanto are happening simultaneously all over the world around central causes. So wake-up and participate, for we are in the early stages of a revolutionary paradigm shift in the consciousness of the masses that can truly change society for the better. About the Author
An avid free-thinker, Tim has set out on a mission in search of the truth in whatever form it may come. Ever since his awakening several years ago, his passion for knowledge and justice has led him on a journey into deep research, cultural travel, and complete expansion of the mind. Tim feels as if the information freely flowing into the hands of the public, due to the dawn of the Internet, cannot be stopped at this point, so he has made it his goal to help facilitate and breakdown this complex stream of information, so that others can accelerate their own awakening and be part of the inevitable change happening in society.
You can connect with Tim at: | 0 |
Kid Has ‘Birthday Surprise’ For Church, Does The Unexpected While Inside Alisha Rich in Religion Share This
A teenager recently celebrated his birthday in Harriman, Tennessee. However, the kid isn’t so fond of his yearly celebration and finally became fed up with it, devising a plan not many would consider. In fact, he came up with a “birthday surprise” for a local church, and onlookers spotted him doing the unexpected after he walked inside. Ryan Nelson
Ryan Nelson, 13, had explained to his parents that he didn’t want to celebrate his birthday. Although most kids would like to invite all of their friends, open gifts, and eat some birthday cake, Ryan didn’t want to spend his special day that way. Instead of having a huge ordeal for himself, he devised a plan that not many people would ever consider. He was going to give a “birthday surprise” to a church.
Ryan decided to take the money his parents would have spent on a party, as well as all of his birthday money, and he donated it to a local church. “He also packed up and donated canned soups, ramen noodles and lots of clothes and blankets,” according to WVLT . His donations will go to the M-14 Ministries’ “Dry Bones” shelter.
“The community, in my opinion, has given me so much,” Ryan explained. “So I think this year, on my birthday, it’s time to give back to the community.” Ryan’s donations
The director of the shelter, Dwayne Linger, was overwhelmed by Ryan’s generosity. “I just hope that other kids see what he’s done and follow his lead,” Linger said. “I think it’s a great blessing, what he’s done.” Ryan admitted that he came up with the idea after he watched his mother donate to another church earlier this year.
It’s great to see that some of those in the younger generation can think about someone other than themselves. We need to ensure that our children realize how much of an impact their beliefs and actions will have on our country’s future. | 0 |
The National Interest
Last week, the New York Times ran a news story on inflatable jets and missile launchers being added to the Kremlin’s arsenal. Using balloons as weapons of war may sound strange and lead one to think Moscow has concocted a novel method of war. Upon deeper analysis, what the Russians are doing is nothing particularly new. The British and American military famously employed inflatable tanks in World War II in order to deceive the Germans. The Serbs more recently used decoys during the intervention in the Balkans to trick NATO bomber pilots. The method to this inflatable madness is based on well-established military thinking, going all the way back to ancient China. To get a better sense of what the Russians are doing and how they understand warfare, one only needs to pick up a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War .
“Warfare is the Way (Tao) of deception. Thus although [you are] capable, display incapability to them. When committing to employ your forces, feign inactivity. When [your objective] is nearby, make it appear to be distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby.”
This line from Sun Tzu is especially important in Russian military thinking of recent years. The Kremlin’s use of misinformation in the media is a particularly obvious example of deception, but the actual movement of men and material is just as important—especially to nations sharing a border with Russia. Moscow is intent on ensuring the West that Russian troops can mass at a moments notice and be rapidly deployed to far-flung corners of the country. Russia could inject itself into numerous theaters on its periphery and beyond, including the Baltic states with the threat of little green men, to continued military drills with China in the South China Sea to the risk of rekindling war in Nagorno-Karabakh . All of these scenarios prove irksome for policy makers in Washington. Dealing with rapidly deployable troops, that have the ability to stoke conflicts thousands of miles apart, makes deciphering the Kremlin’s actions a frustrating ordeal.
“Probe them to know where they have excess, where an insufficiency.”
NATO pilots have been working overtime to deal with frequent Russian incursions into allied airspace. The most recent incident occurred only two weeks ago, in which Norway, the United Kingdom, France and Spain scrambled aircraft to confront Russian TU-160 bombers flying near their territory. Russia’s high-profile encounters, including a very close flyby of a U.S. Navy ship and barrel rolling over an American reconnaissance aircraft, clearly demonstrates that it is trying to determine how and in which ways NATO will respond. These actions aim to keep allied forces on their toes, judging reaction times and what assets are used to counter their forces.
“Thus one who excels at moving the enemy deploys in a configuration (hsing) to which the enemy must respond. He offers something that the enemy must seize. With profit he moves them, with the foundation he awaits them.”
The Russians are very fond of this method, which is usually characterized by instigating incidents in order to execute their so-called reflexive control . This concept focuses on creating international incidents and forcing others to react them, in which the only plausible outcome is usually in favor of the Kremlin. The most notable case of this logic was applied in Russia’s entry into the Syrian civil war. Although Moscow’s intervention has had its pitfalls, largely driven by having to work with troublesome allies in Tehran and Damascus, it has made itself the primary external actor in the country. The slow American response to the Syrian war allowed Moscow to enter the fray and change the reality on the ground. In doing so, the momentum of the conflict swung in favor of the Russian-led coalition with President Assad’s grip on power secured. Whether the West likes it or not, the Russians will now be part of the peace process. Calls by France and the United States to investigate Russia’s bombing campaign as a war crime will not change this reality. The end result is that the Russian-led coalition is setting the pace in the conflict, with Washington and the West struggling to keep up.
These selected passages from the Art of War help shed light on the Kremlin’s calculus. A strong case can be made that the Russian are employing these means in order to maximize the effectiveness of their armed forces in the face materially stronger opponents like the NATO alliance. Although these deceit-based tactics are signs of weakness, it does not make their use any less dangerous. If one is to believe Moscow is undermining the American-led world order, forcing NATO to continually be on alert is certainly resource draining and creates domestic pressure through the questioning of the alliance’s worth and purpose. While Putin may not be a grand strategist—given the hardships Russia faces through its own actions—he has been doing his homework on war. In order to avoid direct conflict with Moscow and better understand its methods, policy makers would be wise to read up on its approach to war and tactics they are likely to employ.
Blake Franko is an assistant editor at the National Interest. | 0 |
Rep. Mo Brooks ( ) told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow of Breitbart News Daily on Friday morning that he expects a vote on the House Obamacare replacement bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) the same day. Brooks is opposed to the bill. [“I do not control the voting process. That’s done by [Speaker of the House Paul Ryan] and he can always change his mind,” Rep. Brooks noted. “But as of last night, we’re voting today. ” He said he was uncertain if estimates that the bill does not have enough votes to pass are still valid. “There were a lot of emotional pleas last night that might cause people to take off their thinking hats and react with their hearts, rather than their heads, and support what we all know is bad legislation,” he said. “First, I believe it is a horrible replacement bill,” Brooks declared, when Marlow asked why so many Republicans support a bill that seems to fall far short of GOP promises to repeal Obamacare. “Second, in my judgment, the reason is there are a lot of Republican politicians who, back home, wanted to pretend that they were in favor of Obamacare repeal in order to win their primaries, when, in fact, they weren’t,” he contended. “And now we’re to the stage where votes count. If we can get bills to the president’s desk, there’s a good chance that they will be signed. We are suddenly finding that a lot of Republican congressmen, maybe they weren’t really for repeal of Obamacare in the first place. ” “That’s why we have a bill that is referred to as ‘ ’ or ‘Obamacare 2. 0’ — because it does not repeal Obamacare,” he explained. “In fact, it keeps the substantive parts of Obamacare that have caused premiums to skyrocket, which is why the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation are warning us in Congress that health insurance premiums over the next two years will go up 15 to 20 percent, rather than drop like you would have happen if there was an Obamacare repeal. ” Brooks said he had two major reasons for believing the House bill is a bad piece of legislation. “One is we were sent to Washington, D. C. to help struggling American families with healthcare costs, not pass legislation that’s going to continue to increase the cost of health care, which is what this bill does,” he said. “What we should be doing is implementing cost containment measures,” Brooks argued. “We should be repealing the parts of Obamacare that have forced these skyrocketing premiums on struggling American families, rather than keep them in this new bill. ” “In addition to that, we should interject new provisions that will force competition into the marketplace,” he continued. “By way of example, we should be forcing interstate health insurance competition that, in turn, will force lower insurance prices, as health insurance companies from around the country compete for a customer base. We should be repealing antitrust exemptions that suppress competition, that create oligopolies and monopolies that, in turn, drive up healthcare costs. ” “Those are the kinds of things we should be doing on the cost containment side so that premiums will not go up that estimated 15 to 20 percent, as is represented to us by both the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. As an aside, I’ve heard no argument to the contrary — much less no persuasive argument to the contrary,” he said. “The second reason may even be bigger than the first, and that is that Obamacare 2. 0 is the largest Republican welfare program in the history of the Republican Party. That has a lot of implications, cascading effects,” Brooks warned. “By way of example, it undermines the work ethic. It encourages more and more Americans to live off the hard work of others. Obamacare 2. 0, because of this welfare provision over time, is going to dramatically increase the need to raise taxes or borrow more money to pay for, if past experiences are any indication, what will be escalating welfare costs. As you know, struggling American families cannot afford more taxes, and America cannot afford more debt. It’s already at $20 trillion. We’re already being warned that we’re heading into insolvency and bankruptcy. We need to heed those warnings, rather than destroy what it took more than two centuries of American ancestors to build. ” “In addition to that, there’s a huge political ramification, and you see it a little bit in the debate that we’ve had so far. By way of example, if this bill passes with this huge welfare program, all of a sudden, you are converting tens of millions of voters who now are into welfare dependents — thus making elections about who can deliver the most welfare for me to help me with my health insurance premium,” he said. “That’s going to have a huge electoral impact. That’s going to turn America over to the Bernie Sanders socialist wing of American society. Quite frankly, it may be the death knell for the free enterprise system that has helped make America the greatest economic power in the world,” he warned. Brooks offered an example of how the political dynamics of the House Republican bill were making the problem worse, even before the bill is voted upon. “Obamacare 2. 0, this Republican welfare program, was introduced about two weeks ago,” he said. “The Congressional Budget Office, on March the 13, did an analysis of that bill as it was two weeks ago. Two weeks later, the Congressional Budget Office on March 23 did another analysis of what purports to be the amended version of Obamacare. Over that period, the financial projections worsened by $187 billion, as congressional politicians scrambled to promise more and more welfare to placate merely feared demands of these projected welfare recipients. So just the mere fear of future demands for welfare caused this House of Representatives to worsen our financial condition by $187 billion in just two weeks, in this legislation. ” “We’re not doing what we were sent here to do: cut premium costs, make health care more affordable on the one hand, and on the other hand, to create a huge new welfare program that, in effect, duplicates the structure of Obamacare,” he lamented. “That’s not what the Alabama voters sent me to Washington, D. C. to do, and I’m very much puzzled by those other congressman who think that’s a good thing. ” Brooks predicted that “if people think with their heads,” the bill will “go down into a crashing defeat. ” “If they think with their hearts, then it has a reasonable chance of passing,” he added. “There is tremendous pressure, particularly amongst Republican friends in the House and Senate and the White House, to pass this legislation because of our friendship, as opposed to whether it’s good or bad for America. ” Marlow noted that the bill is “overwhelmingly unpopular” with voters, scoring as low as 17 percent support in polls, but seems to enjoy vastly disproportionate support from the House Republican caucus. “It has very little to do with what America wants outside the Beltway and a lot to do with what America — and, in particular, special interest groups and lobbyists — want,” Brooks replied. “From my perspective, it’s the worst I’ve ever faced, and I’ve been in public life for three decades,” he said, when Marlow professed to have heard few cogent defenses of the bill. Brooks had little use for the argument that this legislation was just step one in a or “ ” plan to repeal Obamacare. The White House description of this strategy describes step two as relief from burdensome regulations, and step three as “additional legislation,” such as permitting health care to be sold across state lines and reforming malpractice insurance. “I agree with the argument of those in the Senate who have called part three the ‘sucker bucket,’” he said. “And part two is subject to litigation that will tie it in knots for who knows how many years. If it’s good, why not put it in this legislation? If we’re really going to do it, why not put it in this legislation and force it through the House, and force it through the Senate, if it’s good and if it’s going to happen. ” “Two and three — two might happen to some degree, although who knows how many years it will take for it to get through all the litigation aspects? Number three, never happen,” he predicted. Marlow cited the argument that defeat for the House Obamacare bill will hinder Republicans in their mission to “stop the Democratic Party” and its agenda. “Stopping the Democrats is meaningless if we’re not, at the same time, doing the right thing for our country,” Brooks declared. “I don’t believe this impacts President Trump’s reputation so much as it impacts those who have given the president bad advice and put him in this position,” he added. “The simplest and smartest thing to do would have been to pull up the Obamacare repeal bill that passed the Republican House and passed the Republican Senate two years ago that was vetoed by President Obama,” he said. “Pass that through the House. Pass that through the Senate. Have whatever effective date you want in the future to implement the market principles that we want to force competition into the marketplace. ” “We had legislation that we voted on in the past that got unanimous support of Republicans in the House, unanimous support of Republicans in the Senate. It even complied with those arcane, crazy Senate rules that frustrate America in so many different ways, and it made it to the president’s desk,” Brooks pointed out. “It baffles me that that was not done, although it doesn’t really baffle me once you start thinking about all these Republican politicians who wanted to go back home saying, giving the impression, that they’re for repeal of Obamacare when they really aren’t. ” Marlow noted that President Trump has essentially said the current House GOP bill is the only repeal and replace option that will be on the table for the near future and voting it down will leave Obamacare in place for a long time to come. He asked Brooks if this was a “threat” to recalcitrant lawmakers or, at least, a dramatic “ratcheting up of the rhetoric. ” “I would call it a bargaining tool or a tactic,” Brooks replied. “I am mildly surprised, but not too much. It seems consistent with the bargaining tactics that the president talks about in The Art of the Deal. I would hope that whoever is advising the president would not advise him to surrender on an issue of this magnitude. America deserves better. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
ISTANBUL — The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will soon leave office, a government official said. His departure is occurring amid a disagreement between the two men over Mr. Erdogan’s drive for more power. The two leaders met on Wednesday night, according to the Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that had not been announced publicly. “It’s unlikely that Davutoglu will run for leadership again,” he said. The prime minister is expected to hold a news conference on Thursday after a meeting with officials of the governing Justice and Development Party, or A. K. P. according to Turkish news reports, which also said that Mr. Davutoglu was likely to step aside after a coming special party congress. The leadership change atop the Islamist party comes as the country is facing multiple challenges, including a war with Kurdish militants, terrorist attacks by Islamic State fighters, and the arrival of millions of Syrian refugees. The shuffle clears the way for Mr. Erdogan, who critics say has become increasingly authoritarian, to consolidate even more authority. Under Turkey’s Constitution, the prime minister is the most powerful official, and the president, although he has some genuine powers, is a largely ceremonial figure. But Mr. Erdogan has not been like previous Turkish presidents, and there has been little doubt that he is the country’s political figure. Mr. Davutoglu, who became prime minister in 2014, after Mr. Erdogan was elected president, had long been seen as subservient to Mr. Erdogan. But simmering tensions between them boiled over this week, leading to speculation in the Turkish news media about a rift. The tensions apparently reached a breaking point last week, after party officials stripped Mr. Davutoglu of his power to choose provincial party leaders. “Even with a person as compliant as Davutoglu, the relationship didn’t work,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and the chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, a research organization here. In public, Mr. Davutoglu has sought mostly to play the role of party loyalist and devotee to Mr. Erdogan, but analysts say the two men have privately differed on several issues. Mr. Davutoglu was said to be resistant to Mr. Erdogan’s ambition to rewrite Turkey’s Constitution and establish an executive presidency. Recently, Mr. Davutoglu had suggested he was willing to return to peace negotiations to end a long war — which resumed in earnest last year — with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or P. K. K. while Mr. Erdogan has appeared more hawkish. The two leaders also seemed to differ on monetary policy, with Mr. Davutoglu supporting the independence of the central bank, and Mr. Erdogan seeking to intervene for lower interest rates. In choosing to step down as the leader of the A. K. P. Mr. Davutoglu will clear the way for Mr. Erdogan to pick a new party boss who will then become prime minister. “The new elected prime minister’s main mission will be to drive forward the presidential agenda,” Mr. Ulgen said. But even with a new prime minister, it will not be so easy for Mr. Erdogan to alter the Constitution as he wants. The A. K. P. which has been in power for more than a decade, with Mr. Erdogan the prime minister for much of that time, does not have enough seats in Parliament to approve the changes on its own or call a national referendum on a new constitution. Most opinion polls show the Turkish public opposes Mr. Erdogan’s proposed presidential system. Mr. Erdogan rose to power in 2003, and the A. K. P. won several national elections. But last June, the party lost its parliamentary majority and the Kurdish political party won seats in Parliament for the first time. That is when war resumed between the Turkish state and the Kurdish P. K. K. which seemed eager to return to arms. Critics of Mr. Erdogan said he sought to use the conflict as a political strategy to regain nationalist votes. Indeed, after failed coalition talks with opposition parties last summer, Mr. Erdogan called for new elections, and the party regained its majority in November. With Mr. Erdogan’s not having enough support to amend the Constitution, analysts have predicted that with a new prime minister, he could move to hold early elections in a bid to amass more seats in Parliament. | 1 |
They came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, in the traumatic aftermath of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They fought and protested a war together, argued over Nixon and Kissinger together, laughed at Archie Bunker together. As children, they practiced drills as adults, they cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the 1990s, they saw one of their own become president, watching him gain glory as one of the most gifted politicians of his time, but also infamy as one of its most — a poster child for the Me Generation. They are of course the baby boomers, the collective offspring of the most fertile period in American history. At 75 million strong, they have been the most dominant force in American life for three decades, and one of its most maligned. Enlightened but introspective but reckless, they are known among the cohorts that followed them — and even to some boomers themselves — as the generation that failed to live up to its lofty ideals, but still held fast to its sense of superiority. If Bill Clinton was their id, Hillary Clinton is their superego in a pantsuit. A second Clinton presidency could represent a last hurrah for the baby boomers. But it could also offer a shot at a kind of generational redemption. “There is a kind of quality to it,” said Landon Y. Jones, the author of the 1980 book “Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation. ” “This is their last chance to get it right. ” A shared history binds the boomers — as do, broadly speaking, some shared traits. Their parents suffered through the Depression and World War II before rearing them in the most prosperous society the world had ever seen. Inevitably, perhaps, they were guided by two polestars: responsibility and entitlement. Those dueling impulses powered the rise of both Clintons: one impulse galvanizing supporters who deeply admired their commitment to public service, the other galling critics who saw them as playing by their own rules. “There’s this tremendous idealism with the Clintons — actually living social change, embodying social change,” said Gil Troy, the author of “The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s” and a history professor at McGill University in Montreal. “But also, at the end of day, not just having this will to power, but also being so convinced of their own that they improvise a new set of morality and ethics. ” Like her husband’s, Mrs. Clinton’s political odyssey began in earnest when she volunteered for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid, one that ended in a lopsided, takedown of ’60s idealism at the hands of President Richard M. Nixon and his “silent majority. ” It was there, in the trenches, that the Clintons — still in their and not yet married — began to assemble the network of trusted friends that continues to surround them. Twenty years later, at 46, Bill Clinton became the president ever elected. At 69, Hillary Clinton would be the . In many respects, her journey has become her generation’s journey — from protester to parent and now grandparent, from earnest idealist to realist. They would be bookends on their cohort, one seizing the national stage on behalf of their generation in its prime, the other, who now qualifies for Medicare, vying to lead it into its dotage. Of course, the presidential election has featured not one but two members of the generation born between 1946 and 1964. And just as the Clintons grew out of the campus left, Donald J. Trump traces his political following, if not his own formation, to that generation’s Nixon voters: those who did not protest, or even attend college who preferred Elvis to the Beatles, Sinatra to Santana, the familiar to the foreign, order to upheaval. (Though at this point, what was once the counterculture has become the culture: Mr. Trump has been known to play the Rolling Stones at events.) If Mr. Trump does not fit the profile of the searching, liberal, conflicted boomer, well, blame the liberal boomers whose cultural contributions crystallized that image, most memorably in “The Big Chill. ” (They also created its foil: Think of Mr. Trump — schooled in uniform — as the R. O. T. C. commander Douglas C. Neidermeyer in “Animal House. ”) The most enduring boomer icons, however, sprang not from a Hollywood script but from Yale Law School and the Arkansas Statehouse. Standing under the balloons at Madison Square Garden in 1992 — with Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” blaring — the Clintons sent a clear message to their peers: Yesterday’s gone. Our time is now. And also, maybe, now. Not much remains of the optimism that swept in with the new administration in 1993, and maybe with good reason. The great accomplishments of Mr. Clinton’s presidency — peace and its anticipated dividends, a surging economy, shrinking budget deficits — were washed away. As some boomers sent their kids to college, others sent their sons and daughters off to fight in a seemingly permanent conflict halfway around the globe. If elected, Mrs. Clinton would inherit the Islamic State, an income gap, partisan gridlock and a populace so polarized and full of loathing that it seems to be segregating. Her husband had it easy by comparison. It’s no fun getting old. Not that Mrs. Clinton is complaining. She has embraced her longevity, beginning a recent rally in Pueblo, Colo. with a callback to her last visit there. “I know there are a lot of really young people here,” she said, “but was anybody here back in 1992?” Cheers shot up from some of the gathering’s elders. People have been hurrying the Clintons’ generation off the stage for a while: Time magazine declared the “Twilight of the Boomers” in a headline in 2000. Even then, the nation was suffering from boomer fatigue. “ Baby Boomer to Begin Soon, Experts Say,” The Onion teased, imagining “a glorious new world in which no one will ever again have to endure tales of Joan Baez’s performance at Woodstock. ” In 2008, Barack Obama, though born at the tail end of the generation in 1961, consciously styled himself as younger, saying that Americans were tired of “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation,” that they hungered for “a different kind of politics. ” No doubt. And yet in many ways, the 2016 election has served as a rematch between two boomer factions: one candidate promising a throwback to an idealized postwar America at its most muscular, the other sounding the familiar liberal call to tear down whatever societal barriers still stand. Mrs. Clinton is a long way from the 1969 commencement speaker who told her Wellesley classmates that the challenge for their generation was to “practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible. ” She is now more likely to warn of the perils of overpromising. “We don’t need any more of that,” she says. But the battles of the ’60s are never far from Mrs. Clinton’s mind. Even a September speech to students at Temple University in Philadelphia featured a reference to her struggles during the Vietnam War. In the fight for the soul of the boomers, Mrs. Clinton holds a slight upper hand: A recent New York News poll showed her with an edge over Mr. Trump, 48 percent to 42 percent, among likely voters in their generation. The difference was within the poll’s margin of error. As much as they were inspired by Mr. Clinton and exhilarated by Mr. Obama, her peers appear to be turning to her to supply the voice of reason a fractious country needs. “I think at this point in history, it’s crucial that we have someone who understands the long view,” said the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who was born in 1958 and has been campaigning for Mrs. Clinton. “I think we’re a nation in trouble. ” They remain a powerful voting bloc. Though millennials are now the most populous living generation, they lack the boomers’ electoral punch. According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than half of eligible millennial voters said they voted in 2012. Turnout among boomers was nearly 70 percent. This is Mrs. Clinton’s demographic sweet spot. Her stump speeches are liberally salted with mentions of her grandchildren her platform includes opposing efforts to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age. And a volunteer army of boomer celebrities, some of whom have known the Clintons since the 1990s, are working on her behalf, including the actress Mary Steenburgen and her husband, Ted Danson. Another is Rob Reiner, who played the lefty student Michael Stivic on “All in the Family” and says he feels that the bigotry sent up on that sitcom has flared back up with a vengeance. “We are living in ‘All in the Family’ right now,” Mr. Reiner said. “It’s a daily reality show that stars Donald Trump as Archie Bunker. ” If those old characters were still around, Archie would probably be blaming Michael for everything from free trade to illegal immigration to the country’s divorce rate. And Michael would be taking credit for gay marriage, a black president and Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize. For all the steep challenges that await, if Mrs. Clinton is elected, she will at least have the chance to pursue a new set of progressive causes. To address and amend aspects of her husband’s political legacy. And to reshape America’s image of a generation and the couple that has come to embody it. | 1 |
He has been the host of the Emmy Awards, the ESPY Awards, the American Music Awards, the “Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson” and, for 14 years, his ABC show “Jimmy Kimmel Live! ,” so it’s only fair that Jimmy Kimmel should at last be allowed to host the Academy Awards. He’ll finally get his chance this Sunday, the first time in nearly a decade that a working star will be M. C. of the Oscars. Mr. Kimmel, 49, is taking on this award show in a year when there doesn’t seem to be much mystery about which major nominees will win. And he’ll have to find a way to connect with a nationwide audience at a fractious time, when political tempers are running high. So, no pressure there. As Mr. Kimmel said in a recent telephone interview, speaking from the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is produced: “I’ve come to terms with the fact that someone is going to be disappointed in me at the end. I just don’t know who it will be yet. ” Days before he steps onto the Dolby Theater stage, in front of tens of millions of people, Mr. Kimmel spoke about the challenges of making this show while still working his day job and trying to find a sweet spot between a program with too much political content and one with not enough. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. How are the preparations going? Where do you even find the time? What, am I supposed to be planning something? I was thinking I would wing it. No one’s ever done that before. We’ll do some crowd work and see how it goes. [Laughs] We do it in whatever spare time we have. After the show, I usually spend an hour or two on the Oscars, and dedicate Fridays to and planning and interviews and meetings, promo shoots. Eventually it adds up. Does hosting a nightly talk show better prepare you for a challenge like this? When you do a show every night, hosting an awards show doesn’t seem as monumental a task as it might. Really, when you break it down, it’s like a monologue and a couple of taped pieces, then some intros and jokes along the way. You have to give out awards for all the categories, and you want to keep the show under nine hours long. You don’t have a ton of room to play with. Are you approaching this as a potential audition to host again in future years? That’s definitely not something I have in mind. [Laughs] You never know how these things have gone until you step offstage and read what a bunch of strangers thought. All your friends tell you it was great, no matter what you did, and your mother thinks it’s wonderful. Obviously it’s an honor, but the workload cannot be ignored. How do you make peace with this? It’s not even really about the work — it’s the anxiety leading up to the event itself, and the general malaise that I put my family through. I said to my wife this morning, “What if, to save time, instead of using the word ‘categories,’ we just called them ‘cats’?” And she pointed out that I would waste more time just explaining that. Given recent award shows and the general tenor of the moment, are you expecting a lot of political speeches? Is there a point where that becomes too much? There definitely is a point at which that becomes too much. There’s also a point at which it becomes too little. And finding that balance is, for me, the most difficult hurdle, when it comes to this broadcast. We don’t know what our mood in this country is going to be on Sunday. We seem to be in a very temperamental period. We’re having wild mood swings as a nation right now. Hopefully everyone will be in a good mood that night. Given that Donald J. Trump won the presidency and the Patriots won the Super Bowl, does that ensure that “La La Land” will win best picture? I don’t know if they go . But my plan is, I’m going to tank the first half of the Oscars. And then lead a furious comeback in the second four hours. Do you also see this as an opportunity to promote your ABC show? Well, let’s be honest: There’s a good chunk of America that doesn’t know that Jimmy Fallon and I are different people. So I’m not going to go into this presuming that they know me and all my bits. You need to approach this without any ego. If there’s too much inside stuff, it won’t work. So we shouldn’t expect to see Guillermo in any Oscars bits? I think that would be confusing to a lot of people. He’ll be working anyway — out on the red carpet, corralling people. People are shocked to hear that we have a show the next night and all week after that. It’s not like we can relax after it — we’ve got to get right back on the pony. There’s no point, really, to doing this if you don’t carry that momentum into your nightly show. In recent weeks, Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” has been drawing more viewers than Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show. ” Do you think it’s a sign that audiences want more pointed topical comedy? This is all fake news. [Laughs] I mean, that’s a very simple way of looking at the ratings. People seem to forget how important your is, too. When “The Voice” comes back, so will the ratings of “The Tonight Show. ” We’re all pretty lucky right now — all the shows — that more people are watching and reacting. I think everyone loves to have a story line, and people get excited if the tide is turning. But any mathematician would bang you over the head with his calculator. There’s a category of hosts — Mr. Colbert, Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Trevor Noah — who seem to own the beat. Do you worry about being left out of this group? It doesn’t worry me. I think it’s wrong. If anything, my concern is, do we do too much Trump stuff on the show? My monologue is at least 50 percent Donald Trump, and it’s not all light commentary. My focus is to comment on what people are talking about. It just so happens that this is what people are talking about. Right now, you go to dinner, and everyone wants to talk about Donald Trump the whole time. Love ’em or hate ’em, he is Topic No. 1, 2 and 4. Would you want to host this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner? If it seemed like it was going to be very uncomfortable, I would consider it. I’m attracted to that kind of situation. But I don’t know that it would be worth all the blowback. I did it once — it went well. Why put myself through that nightmare again? My dream is to be only saddled with doing [the talk show]. That would be just fine with me. | 1 |
Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer dismissed the push for President Donald Trump to release his tax returns by his critics, which was also a focus of protests around the country over the weekend. Krauthammer made the proclamation even though the on the “ Panel” segment, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and NPR’s Mara Liasson, argued the issue was still important, and Trump should release his tax returns to reveal no potential conflicts of interests. “Never,” Krauthammer replied when asked by show host Bret Baier if Trump would release his returns. “This issue is dead. It is a dead parrot. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
Jo Becker and Matthew Rosenberg report in the New York Times that President Trump’s and senior adviser Jared Kushner omitted mention of his meetings foreign government officials when he filed his security clearance paperwork. [From the New York Times: When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s and senior adviser, sought the security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. … In a statement, [Kushner’s lawyer Jamie Gorelick] said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F. B. I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a for foreign officials trying to reach the . I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts. ” No names were disclosed in that correspondence. Read the rest here. | 1 |
I know, the number of big books out each fall is intimidating — even this month, when publishers put off a lot of big fiction until after the election. This week we’ve got the best books related to the election itself (there aren’t many, to be honest). And then we’ve got some smart and entertaining counterprogramming. The books I’m most interested in this week are all very personal stories. First up is Ann Patchett’s new novel, “Commonwealth,” which she calls her most autobiographical to date. If that means it’s anywhere near as good as her collection, “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” I’ll be happy. Also on my pile, two very different memoirs: John le Carré’s account of his path from spy to novelist, and Lauren Collins’s book about falling in love with someone when you don’t speak his or her language. With luck, you’ll find some personal bookmarks on this list as well. Pamela PaulEditor of The New York Times Book Review MAN OF THE WORLD: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, by Joe Conason. (Simon Schuster, $30.) Bill Clinton has had an unusually productive career. This deeply researched narrative about the nearly 16 years since he left office tells that story so far, shedding light on his strengths and weaknesses. COMMONWEALTH, by Ann Patchett. ( $27. 99.) I think many Ann Patchett fans feel like one of the few and special — but there are a lot of us. In both her essays and her fiction (and in her Parnassus bookstore) Patchett just seems to invite readers in. Her latest novel is an engaging family portrait, tracing the lives of six stepsiblings over half a century. THE PIGEON TUNNEL: Stories From My Life, by John le Carré. (Viking, $28.) Who can resist a memoir by the greatest living spy novelist of our time? Many of the clues to his life are revealed here. In this charming memoir, le Carré writes about how his father, a con man, prepared the future author to become first a spy, then a novelist. THE SIX: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters, by Laura Thompson. (St. Martin’s, $29. 99.) The six Mitford sisters still manage to fascinate. This engrossing group biography presents them all, and shows how their enthusiasms, political and literary, encapsulated Britain. WHEN IN FRENCH: Love in a Second Language, by Lauren Collins. (Penguin Press, $27.) Readers of The New Yorker know Lauren Collins’s byline from her stories from Europe. For her first book, Collins, now married to a Frenchman, writes a very personal memoir about love and language, shrewdly assessing how language affects our lives. INDELIBLE INK: The Trials of John Peter Zenger and the Birth of America’s Free Press, by Richard Kluger. (Norton, $27. 95.) What can a colonial libel case tell us about free speech in America? Vivid storytelling enlivens Kluger’s history, which offers some perspective on the press freedom we enjoy today. THE YEAR OF VOTING DANGEROUSLY, by Maureen Dowd. (Twelve, $30.) The Times columnist deliciously captures the theater of this bizarre presidential election and dissects its key players, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, two figures she knows well after decades of reporting on, interviewing and writing about them. MISCHLING, by Affinity Konar. (Lee Brown, $27.) The story of Dr. Josef Mengele’s experiments on children, particularly on twins, was the basis of Lucette Lagnado’s nonfiction investigative history, “Children of the Flames. ” Here Affinity Konar uses that unsettling and grievous history to riveting effect in her debut novel. THE FORTUNES, by Peter Ho Davies. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.) What does it mean to be a ? Peter Ho Davies attempts to answer that question in his latest novel, a meditation on 150 years of the experience. | 1 |
Foods & Supplements For Chemtrail Protection Nov 5, 2016 0 0
There is no question anymore about it. Chemtrails are real and are not to be confused with contrails. If you’re skeptical, that is okay, though please take a look at the CIA Director’s comments about geoengineering here .
For those understanding that chemtrails pose a real threat to humanity, together we’ll take a look at some foods and health supplements that can be used to help protect yourself against chemtrails.
When barium, nano particles of aluminum, radioactive thorium, mercury, lead, ethylene dibromide and many other toxic chemicals and heavy metals are being sprayed into our atmosphere, it is a good idea to learn how to properly defend your body from such contaminants. Chemtrails or contrails?
Foods
The first thing to keep in mind regarding detoxification and health is that we must include foods that help us to naturally detoxify our body, while still taking in nutrients. Any food that has lots of chlorophyll in it will help tremendously in detoxing as well as providing essential nutrients our cells need. Ensuring to include plenty of spinach, green salads, arugula, cilantro, parsley, kale, cucumbers and other green veggies into your meals is a great way to begin.
Looking more specifically at cilantro, we find that when combined with chlorella, it can remove a very large amount of heavy metals within a short time frame. In fact, studies done at the Optimal Wellness Test Research Center showed that within 42 days of using cilantro and chlorella, 74% of aluminum, 91% of Mercury and 87% of lead within the body was removed. It was noted that using cilantro and chlorella in conjunction was important because cilantro mobilizes many more toxins than it can remove from the body, whereas with chlorella also in the bloodstream, it can act to remove the excess toxins found in the bloodstream.
Other foods to consider using are spirulina and medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Lion’s Mane, Chaga and Agarikon. Chaga mushrooms have been scientifically proven to protect against DNA degradation, remove synthetic chemicals and heavy metals, and purify the blood. Cilantro is a wonderful medicinal herb.
Health Supplements
Fulvic acid is a health supplement gaining massive attention in the health supplement field, thanks in large part to Dr. Dan Nuzum . Fulvic acid is the end product of a process called humification. Microorganisms decompose plant matter in the soil which results in fulvic and humic acids. These are perhaps the most important and nutrient rich substances on the planet. In fact, fulvic acid is the most potent anti-oxidant known as it contains over 14 tetratrillion electrons (that’s 14 with 21 zeroes behind it) that it can donate to neutralize free radicals.
This gives it an incredible ability to provide electrochemical balance within the cell, which is crucial for detoxification. It also is rich in electrolytes, increases the synthesis rate of RNA and DNA, increases assimilation of vitamins and minerals into cells.
It also reacts very quickly with radioactive material and renders them neutral and harmless upon contact with such destructive elements. According to Supreme Fulvic :
“ Radioactive elements have an affinity for humic and fulvic acids . They form organo-metal complexes of different absorptive stability and solubility. Uranium and plutonium are influenced by humic substances as are other polluting metals, each being solubilized and absorbed, thereby annihilating that specific radioactivity . Radioactive substances react rapidly with fulvic acid, and only a brief time is required for equilibrium to be reached.”
Additionally, fulvic acids help tremendously with transforming toxic metals in the body :
“Fulvic acid has the power to form stable water soluble complexes with monovalent, divalent, trivalent, and ployvalent metal ions. It can aid the actual movement of metal ions that are normally difficult to mobilize or transport. Fulvic acids are excellent natural chelators and cation exchangers, and are vitally important in the nutrition of cells.”
The source of fulvic acid is important though as Optimally Organic notes that getting fulvic acid from vegetation rather than dried rock beds is best as the excess carbon found in the fulvic from rock beds makes the fulvic ineffective. An incredible health supplement.
In addition to fulvic acid to help against destructive chemicals in the air, nascent iodine is something to also consider.
Nascent iodine is iodine that is in atomic form rather than molecular form. This form of iodine is easily absorbed by the body and is what is produced by the thyroid gland . Having enough iodine in the body is necessary for normal T3 and T4 hormone production as well as in assisting the detoxification process.
In a person who has given themselves sufficient iodine, radioactive iodine(extremely harmful) can’t bind into our body’s receptor cells and will be flushed out. However, it is important to ensure the body is receiving enough absorbable iodine, which nascent iodine provides. Solar frequencies directly interact with our DNA.
Why Chemtrails?
There are a couple reasons discussed as to why chemtrails occur in our skies. The first is that some believe that shadow government want to keep people sick and unwell, so the pharmaceutical and western medical establishments continue to financially profit off of sick and unwell people. The second is that the shadow government wants to block out the Sun’s rays as much as possible. The first is that they know sunlight is actually healthy for a person and the second is so that our DNA does not continue to receive upgrades from the light that comes forth from the Sun. Remember that Russian scientists have scientifically shown how light positively affects DNA.
Additionally, engineer and scientist Maurice Cotterell has stated that genetic mutations and upgrades occur through the action of ionizing radiation and that X-rays and gamma rays from the Sun are the key factor in genetic leaps that species have taken and will continue to take.
What are your thoughts on all of this? Which supplements do you take to boost overall health? Do you take any specifically for protection from harmful chemicals being sprayed in the air and on genetically modified foods? What are your thoughts about the Sun affecting our DNA? Why are chemtrails happening?
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and practices health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information on how to receive health coaching for yourself, a family member or a friend as well as view other inspiring articles. | 0 |
It looked like free money all over the highway. But even the most opportunistic of motorists likely passed by without taking any. Early Thursday morning, a on Interstate 95 near the Delaware Memorial Bridge hit a highway barrier, flipped over and caught fire, spilling about 45, 000 pounds of blank pennies across the northbound lanes, according to the Delaware State Police. That means about eight million coins covered the roadway. Had they been stamped, they would have been worth about $81, 600. Master Cpl. Jeffrey Hale, a police spokesman, confirmed that the vehicle had been heading to the Philadelphia Mint and that the coins were blank. That means, of course, that they were simply discs of zinc that dreamed of being pennies. The driver, Stefan Marinkovic, 25, of Chicago, sustained minor injuries after veering right and crashing into an impact attenuator before riding onto a highway barrier and flipping over. The police did not know why the had gone to the right, but Mr. Marinkovic was able to free himself and was taken to a hospital, the police said. He received a citation for inattentive driving. Corporal Hale said that he did not believe any of the wayward coins had been picked up by passing drivers, but that he was not sure whether they had all been recovered. Those that were will be stored until they can be taken to the mint, the police said. Parts of North and East were shut down for more than 13 hours in response to the crash, disrupting many people’s commutes. Some of them took to social media to complain. A Twitter user named Jordan Naft said that what was typically a drive to work was taking him close to an hour and a half because of the crash, which occurred just before 2 a. m. “Now those delays make cents,” another Twitter user quipped. Mike White, a spokesman for the United States Mint, said that pennies, which are 97. 5 percent zinc and just 2. 5 percent copper, weighed 2. 5 grams apiece. After making sure the driver had not been seriously hurt, Jeff Gore, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of an organization called Citizens to Retire the Penny, said that he liked the idea of the image of hundreds of thousands of blank pennies on the road, as it illustrated the wasteful practice of continuing to produce the coins. “We all know that nobody picks up actual pennies off the sidewalk,” he said. “But I imagine if you have a hundred thousand penny blanks on the highway, someone’s going to have to do that. ” “Even if the truck had made it there without incident, they would still be doing something that doesn’t make any sense,” he added. “We’d still be making a coin that nobody wants. ” | 1 |
You Are Here: Home » Latest Posts » Going Guava: Why Your Hair Needs Guava Leaves Going Guava: Why Your Hair Needs Guava Leaves Prev post Page 1 of 2 Next
Hair loss is becoming a more widely recognized condition in men and women across the country; by the time American men are 35 years old, about two-thirds will experience some degree of noticeable hair loss, with about 85 percent of men seeing a significant thinning of their hair by the time they are 50. The American Hair Loss Association notes that women, as well, experience hair loss, as a result of a number of different causes. As a result of these reasons, treatment for hair loss in women is not as readily available as it is for men.
To remedy this, many individuals have turned to home remedies to prevent and treat hair loss, with varying results. One that has caught the attention of both hair loss patients and researchers in the past 20 years is the use of guava leaves. The sweet fruit, native to Mexico, Central and South America is a nutritious and delicious fruit that is increasingly being called a superfood because of it’s incredible contents and components. Why Guava Leaves for Hair Loss?
Guava leaf is extremely high in a variety of different types of vitamin B, including many of the nutrients needed for hair health. Thiamine: A deficiency of thiamine, or vitamin B1, can lead to hair loss , so it’s important to make sure that your diet for healthy hair includes thiamine. It’s a water-soluble vitamin that is included in many different hair products to maximize absorption in the scalp. Riboflavin: Vitamin B2 or riboflavin, is a building block vitamin that finds and repairs damaged cells, including the DNA that causes hair to thin and fall out. Cooking riboflavin can damage some of it’s health benefits, so it’s important to include the cooking fluid when using this vitamin for hair health. Niacin: Vitamin B3 helps to convert food into energy, and helps to increase the blood flow to the scalp and provide better nutrient and oxygen flow to the scalp. It enhances circulation and improves the structure and shape of the blood cells. Folate: Folic acid, or vitamin B9, can cause hair loss in individuals who are deficient in the nutrient. It also helps to form red blood cells. Pantothenic acid: A lack of vitamin B5 can cause hair loss by weakening the hair follicles. When you have enough, your scalp can help the follicles work properly, relieve the flaking and itching that come along with dandruff, and can encourage new hair growth. Pyridoxine: Vitamin B6 is vital for converting testosterone into the dihydrotestosterone (DHT) that attacks hair follicles. A deficiency of vitamin B6 can cause an increase in DHT and can cause hair loss. Vitamin A: This fat-soluble antioxidant protects hair follicles from damage done by free radicals, and helps cells reproduce — including the cells necessary for hair growth and maintenance. Deficiencies can cause your hair to become dry and brittle, and may be the reason for hair breaking at the ends or roots. Antimicrobial benefits: Guava leaves have been shown to have many different antimicrobial properties that can help to combat any infections or skin conditions that can cause hair loss. They clear up the remnants of the bacteria on the scalp and help to heal the skin, which allows healthy hair to grow.
Guava, also known as guyaba, also has high levels of vitamin C — more than in most citrus fruits. It’s got a rich content of flavonoids, like quercetin, polyphenols, and other important plant chemicals. It is often made into jams and jellies a process made easier because of the high levels of pectin, a dietary fiber, that may play a role in root hair growth and cellular function. Other Health Benefits of Guava Leaves: Diabetes: In east Asia, individuals are using guava leaves to treat diabetes due to the anti-hyperglycemic properties of the extract. In Japan, for example, Guava Leaf Tea, or Bansoureicha, has been approved as a Food for Specified Health Use and is commercially available to help individuals lower elevated blood glucose, along with other conditions. The approval in Japan took place in 2000 as a result of several studies showing the ability of the Guava Leaf Tea to effectively help to combat high blood glucose and sugar intake for individuals with Type 2 diabetes or experiencing pre-diabetic symptoms. High Cholesterol: A 1993 study shows that in a single-blind trial, 145 men ate a similar diet, with 72 taking a soluble fiber and increased-potassium diet that included guava. Following four months of monitoring, the individuals who consumed the guava experienced a reduced blood pressure and decrease in calcium and triglycerides. As a result of the high potassium and soluble fiber content of guava, the fruit may be an effective way to lower high blood pressure and blood lipids. Diarrhea: In some studies , guava has been shown to block some of the pathogens that cause diarrhea. While there hasn’t been extensive research done and published in peer-reviewed journals, there is some evidence that guava leaf extract has helped to improve the number of daily stools, the duration, pain, and spasms in patients with infantile viral enteritis. It’s believed that the components of guava leaf can smooth muscle fibers, which prevents the movement of the intestines and capillary permeability. Other health benefits: Many claims and studies have been done that show at least some positive effect in everything from weight loss and metastatic cancers to staph infections and common colds. Again, extensive research hasn’t been conducted, but these early studies show that there is at least some connection between guava leaves and improved health. Prev post Page 1 of 2 Next Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Comment | 0 |
Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). Tell us about the issues that matter to you — and what you’d like to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. Want to receive California Today by email? Sign up. San Diego may have some of the best fish tacos and beach days, but that’s apparently not enough to keep a lot of its tech talent from fleeing for the San Francisco Bay Area. In a recent column in Voice of San Diego, Alexander Bakst, a computer science student at U. C. San Diego, said that while he and his peers would love to work in the city, “I’m positive that they all will leave. ” The reason? It’s not so much the gap in pay relative to Bay Area employers, though that is a factor, as it is the location of many of San Diego’s tech companies, Mr. Bakst wrote. Most of San Diego’s tech jobs are in parts of the city — such as North County or Sorrento Valley — that they consider too far from downtown, San Diego’s cultural epicenter and millennial stamping ground. Some fresh graduates say they have little interest in living or working in the industrial park atmosphere of Sorrento Valley, where less costly rents have exerted a strong pull on tech companies ever since Qualcomm set up shop there in 1985. Starbucks, a Chili’s and a couple of Indian food spots are there. But not much else. “It’s really just a series of streets with office buildings from one end to another,” said Russ Petrone, a real estate agent. He offered, “I wouldn’t say it’s ugly. ” Rajesh K. Gupta, a professor of computer engineering at U. C. San Diego, said tech graduates with competing offers in the Bay Area or Seattle aren’t likely to go with Sorrento Valley. “It’s just not exciting enough,” he said. In his column, Mr. Bakst wrote that if San Diego wanted to stem the exodus of its young tech class, it needed to nurture jobs in a part of the city where they want to live and work: downtown. But industry professionals and city officials said that is an effort already underway. Jeff Winkler, founder of San Origin Code Academy, which trains software engineers, said more than 100 young had taken up residence in downtown offices in recent years. “They’re here,” he said. “And there’s a lot of cool stuff going on. There just aren’t as many household names. ” Mr. Winkler suggested that another factor was at work in the job deliberations of San Diego’s . Fresh out of college, he said, many of them are simply hungry to check out a more happening town. “Truthfully, people are always going to want to go to San Francisco,” he said. • Census data show that California has the nation’s highest rate of poverty. [LA Weekly] • The city of Hesperia is waging an aggressive campaign to shut down halfway homes. [Los Angeles Times] • The University of California system is starting the school year with its most diverse class of new students in history. [Los Angeles Times] • Gov. Jerry Brown approved $900 million in funding aimed at cleaning up California’s dirty air. [The Associated Press] • Calling health care a human right, California is pushing to insure undocumented immigrants. [The New York Times] • He made six figures at his Facebook dream job — but he couldn’t afford life in the Bay Area. [Vox] • Disney cut about 250 jobs, the latest in a series of moves. [The New York Times] • A show focused on race with an unprintable name was canceled at Cal State Long Beach, leading to a resignation. [The New York Times] • Native Americans have traveled from California to support pipeline protesters in North Dakota. [San Diego ] As Californians ponder whether to legalize marijuana this November, the race is on to create the first roadside pot test. This month, two groups announced advances on devices that could be used by law enforcement to detect THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in a driver’s system. Hound Labs, an Oakland said that its breathalyzer prototype had been by law enforcement officials, while Stanford researchers said they had created a “potalyzer” that can measure the amount of THC molecules in saliva. Hounds Labs, which has been collaborating with scientists at U. C. Berkeley, said its device had an important advantage over tests. Tests of blood, urine or saliva can turn up THC days after a person has smoked marijuana. But the chemical only lingers for a few hours in the breath, the company said. That means its Breathalyzer can signal recent consumption. As a wave of pot decriminalization has swept the country, law enforcement agencies have become increasingly eager to get ahold of a portable device that could help catch stoned drivers. Opponents of California’s Proposition 64, which would allow recreational marijuana, have argued that the move would send more drugged drivers onto the roads. Scientists say it is clear that THC causes deficits in cognitive function, but the amount required to affect driving performance is not well understood. That has not stopped some states, including Washington, Montana and Pennsylvania, from setting legal cutoffs. The California initiative, however, offers no guidance on the matter. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
ROME — It began as a fight over staffing. Then came a dispute about condoms, followed by papal concerns about Freemasons. Now it has become a proxy war between Pope Francis and the Vatican traditionalists who oppose him, with the battleground being a Renaissance palace flanked by Jimmy Choo and Hermès storefronts on Via dei Condotti, Rome’s most exclusive street. The palace is the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, the medieval Roman Catholic order. For months, an ugly, if quiet, spat over staffing simmered behind the order’s walls before spilling across the Tiber River to the Vatican, setting off a between the two camps. Francis and his lieutenants sent angry letters. The Knights ignored them, claiming sovereignty. This past week, the dispute finally blew up. Fed up, Francis took the extraordinary steps of demanding the resignation of the order’s leader — a decision the Knights officially accepted Saturday — and announcing that a papal delegate would step in. Conservatives promptly denounced what they called an illegal annexation and ideological purging by a pontiff, while liberal observers saw the whole episode as resulting from an act of subterfuge by the pope’s most public critic within the Vatican hierarchy, Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American. A seemingly obscure squabble had erupted into an unexpected shock to the church with ideological fault lines running to the top of the Vatican. “The Vatican is a thing built of tradition,” said John Thavis, the author of “The Vatican Diaries” and a veteran church analyst, “and once those traditional parts start feuding with each other, that is a dangerous sign. ” Francis remains one of the world’s most popular figures, but the spat with the Knights is a small indicator of how the political tensions rippling across the globe are alive in the Vatican, too. Only a year ago, Francis’ calls to fight climate change and help migrants seemed to place him in the lead of a progressive global vanguard, in keeping with his push for a more welcoming church. Now, suddenly, he is more politically isolated. The election of President Trump and the rise of populists in Europe have ushered in an angrier era — and emboldened traditionalists inside the Vatican who sense that the pope could be vulnerable. The Knights of Malta is a bastion of Catholic tradition. Founded in the 11th century by Amalfian merchants to help Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, it later became a military force, defending the faith during the Crusades and eventually holding off the armies of the Ottoman Empire from its fortress in Malta. The group, now with a wealthy and aristocratic membership of elite Catholics who parade in ornate raiment, has more recently specialized in aiding refugees and the poor in more than 100 countries. Until this past week, the order was led by the conservative and elaborately titled His Most Eminent Highness the Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Matthew Festing of Britain, a former Sotheby’s representative who had taken a monastic oath. tensions between Mr. Festing and the order’s Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager of Germany, whose father participated in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, escalated in recent months amid accusations that Mr. Boeselager had knowingly overseen the distribution of condoms as head of the order’s charitable arm. Into this volatile situation stepped Cardinal Burke. In 2014, Francis had demoted Cardinal Burke, a leader of the church’s traditionalist movement, from his position on the Vatican’s Supreme Court. The cardinal’s supporters say Francis did this because of Cardinal Burke’s opposition to the pope’s tentative opening to the possibility of allowing divorced Catholics to receive communion. Cardinal Burke’s exile was at least a cushy one, as the pope named him as the Knights’ patron and liaison to the Vatican, where he would be out of the way. But the cardinal has made his presence felt. During the summer, as tensions mounted inside the order, Michael Hichborn, the president of the Lepanto Institute, a conservative Catholic organization in Virginia, conducted what he called a “short investigation” into the order’s international aid arm, which Mr. Boeselager oversaw. Mr. Hichborn said he had discovered that the aid organization was promoting the use of condoms and other contraceptives in Africa and Myanmar, a violation of church rules. “As I was digging around I thought, ‘Well, Cardinal Burke ought to know about this,’” Mr. Hichborn said in an interview. In November, he sent a summary to Cardinal Burke’s office and said he was told that the cardinal “would be working on something” regarding the information. A few days later, Cardinal Burke relayed his concerns about Mr. Boeselager to Francis. According to supporters of the cardinal, the pope then instructed him to root out from the order elements of Freemasonry, Vatican shorthand for adherents of a secular moral view. But other people familiar with the events inside the order said the pope had also urged Cardinal Burke and the order’s leadership to settle the dispute through dialogue. Instead, Mr. Festing and Cardinal Burke met Mr. Boeselager on Dec. 6 and requested his resignation, claiming, Mr. Boeselager said in a statement, “that this was in accordance with the wishes of the Holy See. ” Mr. Boeselager denied knowing about the condom distribution program and considered the move a coup and an attempt to tarnish him as a “liberal Catholic. ” He argued that once he had discovered the program, he had informed the Vatican and it ended. He also refused to leave, setting off a disciplinary procedure that led to his suspension, and reached out to the Vatican for confirmation that the pope desired his removal. Mr. Boeselager declined to comment for this article. Francis was apparently not pleased about the firing and did not want the dispute to spill into the public, which it did when The Tablet, a Catholic publication in England, broke the news. The pope was already critical of the ornate dress favored by the Knights (red military jacket and gold epaulets) and by Cardinal Burke (a long train of billowing red silk known as a cappa magna). Francis also had a history of with the Knights during his time as a cardinal in Argentina. So on Dec. 21, Francis wrote directly to Mr. Festing, conveying his decisions on what he called the “painful circumstances” and making clear that those decisions had “value, regardless of anything else to the contrary. ” Attached to his letter, signed simply “Francesco,” were more letters from his official, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, stating that “His Holiness asked for dialogue as the way to confront and resolve eventual problems” and that “he never spoke, instead, of kicking someone out!” Cardinal Parolin also wrote that the firing “not be attributed to the will of the pope. ” Critically, he noted that the Knights, because of the group’s status as a lay religious order, fell under the pope’s authority, and that the pope had formed a commission to investigate the firing of Mr. Boeselager. But Mr. Festing refused to comply with the papal commission, citing the order’s status as a sovereign entity and raising questions about the integrity of a commission full of Mr. Boeselager’s allies. “I think maybe he was getting bad advice” from Cardinal Burke, said one senior Vatican official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak by the Vatican. (Cardinal Burke and Mr. Festing declined to comment.) Others say Mr. Festing hardly needed to be egged on by Cardinal Burke, and note that despite having no territory, the order is, in fact, sovereign, issuing its own passports and stamps and conducting diplomatic missions. Either way, the Vatican was not thrilled. On Jan. 17, it issued an unusually tough statement supporting the commission and rejecting “any attempt to discredit these members of the group and their work. ” The commission ultimately ruled that the pope did have authority over the Knights of Malta. On Tuesday, he exercised it. He called Mr. Festing to the Vatican and asked for him to step down, a move the Vatican announced the next day. The order followed with its own statement, saying Mr. Festing’s resignation would become official once the order’s counselors met on Via dei Condotti to formally accept it. On Saturday, they did just that, immediately reinstating Mr. Boeselager and promising to collaborate with the pope’s delegate. This delighted the pope’s supporters, who said it showed that conniving conservatives would not push him around. But supporters of Mr. Festing were horrified by the Vatican’s de facto takeover. Supporters of Cardinal Burke complained that the pope, for all his talk of fostering debate, was intolerant of opposing views, especially more orthodox ones. “It sends a message to the rest of the Catholic world that if you try to stand for orthodoxy in the church, you are going to be sent away,” Mr. Hichborn said. “And the people pushing for heterodoxy will be put in power. ” What was not up for debate was that, in the Vatican, Francis gets his way. At the order’s headquarters, a stately wooden mailbox hangs on the doorman’s wall. The three top slots are reserved for the order’s top three officials. On Wednesday morning, Mr. Boeselager’s name had been erased. Mr. Festing’s would soon be gone. The third slot belonged to the order’s interim leader, Grand Commander Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein. But only, a Vatican statement made clear, “pending the appointment of the papal delegate. ” | 1 |
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As the spotlight begins to focus on Hillary Clinton's deputy adviser Huma Abedin amid Wikileaks' email releases, we've exposed her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood a long time ago . Now a new documentary is elaborating on her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis.
Trevor Loudon, who helped in the publication of The Betrayal Papers (which you can read here , here , here , here , here , and here ), is now behind a new documentary titled The Enemies Within .
Loudon began work on the film two years ago.
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, in calling on support for the making of the film wrote, "Trevor and I both know how hard the last six years has been on Americans. We are all struggling just to survive. Many of us have done this at a cost to our livelihoods, our families and our own well-being. Trevor has never given it a second thought. He is a warrior and a patriot in every sense of the word and there is not a soul on this earth that I trust more to have my back when the fighting comes. So, it is no small thing that we come to you now and ask that you donate to the movie that Trevor has in production currently which exposes The Enemies Within – Communists, Socialists & Progressives in the U.S. Congress."
"This is no minor feat we are attempting. We need to raise $100,000 to help with production and distribution," she added. "We face many of the same hurdles that Dinesh D'Souza has faced in his battles to expose the truth about Barack Obama and those who surround him."
WND reports:
In a six-minute trailer of the documentary made available to WND (see below), former intelligence officers express their concern about Abedin's background , including her position in her family's institute, which was established by the Saudi government and supported by a prominent financial contributor to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Abedin has been in headlines since FBI Director James Comey announced Friday that the bureau reopened its investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information after discovering 650,000 of Abedin's State Department emails on a computer owned by her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly sexting a minor.
…
Loudon interviews former CIA operations officer Clare Lopez, who recounts how the Saudi government established the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, the IMMA, and put Huma Abedin's father, Syed Zainul Abedin, in charge.
Huma Abedin served for several years as an assistant editor for the institute's journal, while her father was editor and her mother a co-editor.
Alongside Huma Abedin on the editorial board also was Abdullah Omar Naseef, the founder of the Rabita Trust , a financial institution founded prior to 9/11 for the explicit purpose of funding Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
"Now, this was we might recall that U.S. foreign policy flipped on its head, from going after jihad and jihadist like al-Qaida to, in Libya, for example, aiding and abetting known al-Qaida jihadist militias to overthrow a sitting, sovereign government led by Moammar Gadhafi, no choir boy, to be sure, but our ally at the time," said Lopez.
"All of this happened during the period of time when Clinton was secretary of state and Huma Abedin was at her side, whispering in her ear," she added. | 0 |
Chinese state publications are using leftist protests over the weekend to argue that President Donald Trump has a fragile mandate to govern, and that this proves that free societies are weaker ones than communist dictatorships like that of China. [This according to an opinion article in the Global Times, often China’s most belligerent newspaper. “From the protests against Trump, Chinese people found the schism in the US is becoming increasingly serious and are questioning the reliability and universality of the Western democratic system,” the column argues, citing Chinese social media users as its source. The column also quotes Chinese professor Chu Yin, who says, “many Americans don’t accept ‘procedural justice’ any more just because and liberals have decided that Trump’s victory is the death of democracy. ” “Some Chinese analysts believe the widespread protests show the fragility of Western democracy,” the column claims. The Global Times published another commentary claiming the United States is currently embroiled in total chaos. ” The U. S. is not a united country now, and the authority of its current leadership is not guaranteed,” the article claims, adding that Trump “has a lot of ‘enemies’ within, and he is also making ‘enemies’ across the world. ” Bloomberg notes that the newspaper People’s Daily is also promoting the idea that free societies are on the brink of collapse due to President Trump’s inauguration. “Western style democracy used to be a recognized power in history to drive social development. But now it has reached its limits,” a People’s Daily article reads. “Democracy is already kidnapped by the capitals and has become the weapon for capitalists to chase profits. ” The newspaper reportedly “devoted an entire page on Sunday to critiquing Western democracies … saying the ultimate defeat of capitalism would enable Communism to emerge victorious. ” While the propaganda newspapers have begun to use Trump to galvanize support for the Communist Party, Beijing itself has continued to approach Trump with polite concern. Rather than making any generalizations about the meaning of Trump’s victory on a largely platform, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has repeatedly demanded that Trump respect Communist Party demands, such as their illegal claim to most of the South China Sea and the continued lack of recognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty. “We urge the new administration to fully understand the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue and to continue pursuing the one China policy,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday, following up on comments before the inauguration that sounded little like the combative pieces in official state media. On Friday, asked about Trump’s upcoming inauguration, Hua said: We would like to join hands with the new US administration to uphold the principles of mutual respect and cooperation, deepen communication and dialogue, build up mutual trust, respect and accommodate each other’s core interests and major concerns, properly deal with sensitive issues and disputes in constructive ways, expand bilateral cooperation on bilateral, regional and global issues across the board, and propel further development of ties at a new staring point. Trump has repeatedly stated that he does not think that the “One China” policy, which demands other nations ignore Taiwan’s sovereignty, should remain in effect unquestioned. He has also engaged in communications with Taiwanese President Tsai breaking precedent and infuriating China. While the Foreign Ministry has kept its tone civil, however, Chinese state media has not. In contrast to Hua, the China Daily published a story warning that Beijing will “take the gloves off” with Trump should he continue to entertain the idea of ending “One China. ” | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / Government Corruption / Decorated ‘Hero’ Cop Caught Using His Authority to Steal $170,000 in State Fees Decorated ‘Hero’ Cop Caught Using His Authority to Steal $170,000 in State Fees John Vibes October 28, 2016 Leave a comment
Detroit, MI – Disgraced Michigan State Trooper Seth Swanson was charged with embezzlement this week for pocketing thousands in false fees.
The 31-year-old trooper allegedly stole $170,100 in vehicle fees through an inspections scheme that he ran, where he would forge documentation on potentially stolen vehicles.
The Michigan Attorney General’s Office issued the following state ment detailing Swanson’s theft operation:
“Police officers are given great trust and responsibility, and for that reason are held to a higher standard. When you break the trust you are given and in the process break the law, there are consequences, no matter who you are or what your profession. I want to thank the Michigan State Police and FBI’s Detroit Area Public Corruption Task Force for their hard work on this investigation.”
According to investigators, Swanson was a state-certified salvage vehicle inspector since 2011. As an inspector, Swanson was responsible for overseeing salvage vehicle inspections, during which a $100 fee is collected. For over a year, Swanson allegedly pocketed these fees and forged the forms that authorized the salvage.
Swanson is accused of applying this scam to 1,701 vehicles, bringing in a total of $170,100.
After he was charged, Swanson was forced to resign from the police department.
Police spokesperson Andrea Bitely told reporters that “Our office , in conjunction with the Michigan State Police and Secretary of State, are working together to make sure that all vehicles involved in this case have, actually have a proper salvage vehicle inspection, and we’ll contact the registered owners of the vehicles to make sure we arrange for now inspection in a timely manner.”
Prior to his crimes as an inspector, Swanson was praised in the media as a “hero” in 2013 for being one of the first responders to a large pile-up.
Swanson and his lawyers are attempting to use his past media fame as a defense in this most recent case, despite the fact that it is entirely irrelevant.
Defense attorney John Freeman said that Swanson is still a “hero.”
“These charges don’t detract from the fact that Trooper Swanson was a real-life hero and was a good trooper. It’s easy for people to lose sight of that fact,” Freeman said.
Swanson was released on $10,000 bond and is currently awaiting trial.
Below is a video from 2013 in which Swanson was hailed as a hero. John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. John is currently battling cancer naturally , without any chemo or radiation, and will be working to help others through his experience, if you wish to contribute to his treatments please donate here . Share Social Trending | 0 |
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Fred Couples, playing in his 32nd Masters this year, said he had never seen wind so fierce at Augusta National Golf Club. “Brutal,” Couples said of the conditions during Thursday’s first round. “So difficult, so hard. ” Gusts up to 40 miles per hour blew waves of sand from the greenside bunkers, forming little twisters of grit that forced fans sitting nearby to protect their faces with scarves and jackets. Approach shots landed on greens only to be blown backward into ponds and creeks. Trees not normally in play became new hazards because wind bent branches just enough to put them in play and make them threats to shots. “A day to fight,” Phil Mickelson said. “Guessing what the wind would do to your ball was the game within the game all day. ” It was also a day that started with the world’s hottest golfer, Dustin Johnson, withdrawing from the tournament just minutes before he was to step onto the first tee because of a back injury sustained falling on a staircase Wednesday night. At roughly the same time that Johnson was exiting, Jordan Spieth, who blew his chance at winning last year’s Masters with a stunning 7 on the 12th hole, made an equally startling quadruple bogey on No. 15. It will probably not be remembered as vividly as the 2016 catastrophe, but it was just as spectacular — an unfathomable 9. The first round was, however, still a day of golf, which is to say it was mystifying and indecipherable. As most of the field stumbled around the grounds with faces and expressions of bewilderment, one player waltzed across the layout without distress or strain. Charley Hoffman shot a 65 to take the lead by four strokes. Given the conditions, it may have been one of the better opening rounds ever at the Masters. Hoffman had nine birdies — including 2s on the course’s four par 3s — and two bogeys. “On a day like today, like everyone else I was just trying to make par and not shoot myself out of the tournament,” Hoffman said. “But I started getting some shots close to the hole, and then I couldn’t remember missing a putt. ” Hoffman’s closest pursuer was William McGirt, who shot 69. Lee Westwood, a frequent Masters contender but never a major winner, was a stroke behind McGirt with a 70. A gaggle of golfers finished at one under par, including three major championship winners: Justin Rose, Jason Dufner and Mickelson. “It was a day when experience mattered,” Mickelson said. “The wind was going to magnify your misses, and the guys who miss in the wrong spots will make big numbers. “I love these conditions. Certainly challenging, but that’s O. K. ” Also at one under par was Sergio García, who has long been tormented at Augusta National, and the precocious Matthew Fitzpatrick, playing in just his third Masters. Hoffman, playing in his fourth Masters, did not have an auspicious start to his round: He needed three putts on the third and fifth holes. But, having played well here before, he remained patient. “I step on this property, and it just feels special,” Hoffman said. “Off the tee, it just suits my eye. And I’ve been working hard on my putting. I’ve learned here that you have to be aggressive on your putts. You can’t be afraid to run the ball 3 feet past. ” And Hoffman, a Texan, is used to playing in blustery conditions. At the 2015 Masters, he was in second place after the second round and finished tied for ninth as Spieth claimed the championship. Asked Thursday what lesson he took from contending two years ago, Hoffman said: “I learned that I hit it as good as Jordan. He just made more putts. So the lesson was to make more putts in the Masters. ” Hoffman was eight under par over his final 13 holes. That kind of performance mocked what was going on most of the day, as some of the best golfers in the world were humbled. The former British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen shot a 77, as did the 2007 Masters champion Zach Johnson and last year’s British Open winner, Henrik Stenson. Adam Scott, Webb Simpson and Bernhard Langer, each a major champion, joined Spieth at three over par. Spieth’s score was respectable given his trouble on the 15th, a debacle that included a pitch shot into the pond fronting the green, and three putts. Dustin Johnson, who had won his last three tournaments, warmed up for his afternoon tee time but ultimately decided he could not play because he could not follow through on his swings — even at 80 percent of normal effort. Johnson fell Wednesday while walking down a staircase at his rented home in the Augusta area. With the opening round completed, the Masters field seemed eager to flee the vicinity. As the sun set, sand was still being blown from the bunkers onto other parts of the property. And not a single golfer was hitting golf balls on the practice range. They had had enough. When McGirt’s round was complete — and his was a fruitful round — he was asked where on the golf course the gusts had been at their worst. He answered, “From holes 1 to 18. ” | 1 |
Ruling coalition lawmakers stand to approve the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal in the lower house of the parliament in Tokyo on November 10, 2016.
Japan’s Lower House of parliament has passed the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, despite the fact the deal is likely doomed after Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory. Even Barack Obama gave up on TPP according to The Wall Street Journal.
The ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito backed the agreement, while most of the opposition boycotted the vote.The bill was sent to the Upper House for final approval, with the ruling coalition expecting it to be signed into law by November 30.
TPP has been one of the key points in the economic program of Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who wanted to boost the country’s exports. However, experts view the TPP approval by Japan as a more of symbolic gesture, as the deal is unlikely to ever get a green light under Trump.
During the campaign, the newly-elected president slammed the TPP, which was pushed forward by Barack Obama to limit China’s economic power, calling the agreement a “disaster.”
TPP was “dead and buried,” Marcel Thieliant, Japan Economist from Capital Economics, told Deutsche Welle, adding that “the upshot is that the long-term losses for Japan from the TPP not coming into force are substantial.”
A former Chinese diplomat, now with the China Institute of International Studies, suggested that the TPP would be the “first casualty” of Trump’s success.“Since China isn’t in that bloc, we don’t have anything to lose,” Ruan is cited by Reuters as saying.
The demise of the TPP prompted Beijing to intensify efforts to achieving its own free trade deal in the Asia-Pacific. China’s Vice Foreign Minister, Li Baodong, said that the country will be looking for support of its initiatives at the Asia-Pacific regional summit in Peru on November 19-20.
“Trade and investment protectionism is rearing its head, and Asia-Pacific faces insufficient momentum for internal growth, and difficulties in advancing reforms,” Li told journalists.
“China believes we should set a new and very practical working plan, to positively respond to the expectations of industry, and sustain momentum and establish a free trade area in Asia-Pacific at an early date,” he added.
Beijing proposed the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to regulate free trade in the area.
According to Li, the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Peru confirmed Beijing’s “confidence in promoting the FTAAP process.” Previously, Beijing was concerned the TPP would be used by Washington to make China open it’s markets by becoming part to the agreement or isolating the country from other economies in the region.
Obama had framed TPP, which excluded China, as an effort to write Asia’s trade rules before Beijing could, establishing US economic leadership in the region as part of his “pivot to Asia”.
Besides the US and Japan the TTP deal included Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The agreement was part of Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” with Obama hoping it would establish US economic leadership in the region by formulating Asia-Pacific trade rules before Beijing does it.
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Donate Trump in the White House: an Interview With Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky speaks in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 12, 2015. (Photo: Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación Argentina) By C.J. Polychroniou / truth-out.org On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump managed to pull the biggest upset in US politics by tapping successfully into the anger of white voters and appealing to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself. But what exactly does Trump's victory mean, and what can one expect from this megalomaniac when he takes over the reins of power on January 20, 2017? What is Trump's political ideology, if any, and is "Trumpism" a movement? Will US foreign policy be any different under a Trump administration? Some years ago, public intellectual Noam Chomsky warned that the political climate in the US was ripe for the rise of an authoritarian figure. Now, he shares his thoughts on the aftermath of this election, the moribund state of the US political system and why Trump is a real threat to the world and the planet in general. C.J. Polychroniou for Truthout: Noam, the unthinkable has happened: In contrast to all forecasts, Donald Trump scored a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton, and the man that Michael Moore described as a "wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath" will be the next president of the United States. In your view, what were the deciding factors that led American voters to produce the biggest upset in the history of US politics? Noam Chomsky: Before turning to this question, I think it is important to spend a few moments pondering just what happened on November 8, a date that might turn out to be one of the most important in human history, depending on how we react. No exaggeration. The most important news of November 8 was barely noted, a fact of some significance in itself. On November 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) delivered a report at the international conference on climate change in Morocco (COP22) which was called in order to carry forward the Paris agreement of COP21. The WMO reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels, but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming. The WMO reported further that temperatures are approaching dangerously close to the goal established by COP21, along with other dire reports and forecasts. Another event took place on November 8, which also may turn out to be of unusual historical significance for reasons that, once again, were barely noted. On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government -- executive, Congress, the Supreme Court -- in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history. Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand. Is this an exaggeration? Consider what we have just been witnessing. During the Republican primaries, every candidate denied that what is happening is happening -- with the exception of the sensible moderates, like Jeb Bush, who said it's all uncertain, but we don't have to do anything because we're producing more natural gas, thanks to fracking. Or John Kasich, who agreed that global warming is taking place, but added that "we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it." The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible. Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump's top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obama's temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy corporations boomed, including the world's largest coal miner, Peabody Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trump's victory, registered a 50 percent gain. The effects of Republican denialism had already been felt. There had been hopes that the COP21 Paris agreement would lead to a verifiable treaty, but any such thoughts were abandoned because the Republican Congress would not accept any binding commitments, so what emerged was a voluntary agreement, evidently much weaker. Effects may soon become even more vividly apparent than they already are. In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make today's pale in significance. With considerable justice, Bangladesh's leading climate scientist says that "These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States." And to the other rich countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the environment. These catastrophic consequences can only increase, not just in Bangladesh, but in all of South Asia as temperatures, already intolerable for the poor, inexorably rise and the Himalayan glaciers melt, threatening the entire water supply. Already in India, some 300 million people are reported to lack adequate drinking water. And the effects will reach far beyond. It is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history -- whether organized human life will survive in anything like the form we know -- and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster. Similar observations hold for the other huge issue concerning human survival: the threat of nuclear destruction, which has been looming over our heads for 70 years and is now increasing. It is no less difficult to find words to capture the utterly astonishing fact that in all of the massive coverage of the electoral extravaganza, none of this receives more than passing mention. At least I am at a loss to find appropriate words. Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise, it appears that Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive victory has to do with curious features of American politics: among other factors, the Electoral College residue of the founding of the country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in each state; the arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past elections, and probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable margin of victory in the popular vote for the House, but hold a minority of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in presidential elections, this one included). Of some significance for the future is the fact that in the age 18-25 range, Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support. How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face. According to current information, Trump broke all records in the support he received from white voters, working class and lower middle class, particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural and suburban, primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger throughout the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in the unanticipated Brexit vote and the collapse of centrist parties in continental Europe. [Many of] the angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan -- "St. Alan," as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed in 2007-2008, threatening to bring the whole world economy down with it. As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on "growing worker insecurity." Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits and security, but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards. Working people, who have been the subjects of these experiments in economic theory, are not particularly happy about the outcome. They are not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for nonsupervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work . The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the '50s and '60s, the minimum wage -- which sets a floor for other wages -- tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15. With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force participation remains below the earlier norm. And for working people, there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with little security in some service profession. Apart from wages, benefits and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the future, of a sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role. The impact is captured well in Arlie Hochschild's sensitive and illuminating portrayal of a Trump stronghold in Louisiana , where she lived and worked for many years. She uses the image of a line in which residents are standing, expecting to move forward steadily as they work hard and keep to all the conventional values. But their position in the line has stalled. Ahead of them, they see people leaping forward, but that does not cause much distress, because it is "the American way" for (alleged) merit to be rewarded. What does cause real distress is what is happening behind them. They believe that "undeserving people" who do not "follow the rules" are being moved in front of them by federal government programs they erroneously see as designed to benefit African-Americans, immigrants and others they often regard with contempt. All of this is exacerbated by [Ronald] Reagan's racist fabrications about "welfare queens" (by implication Black) stealing white people's hard-earned money and other fantasies. Sometimes failure to explain, itself a form of contempt, plays a role in fostering hatred of government. I once met a house painter in Boston who had turned bitterly against the "evil" government after a Washington bureaucrat who knew nothing about painting organized a meeting of painting contractors to inform them that they could no longer use lead paint -- "the only kind that works" -- as they all knew, but the suit didn't understand. That destroyed his small business, compelling him to paint houses on his own with substandard stuff forced on him by government elites. Sometimes there are also some real reasons for these attitudes toward government bureaucracies. Hochschild describes a man whose family and friends are suffering bitterly from the lethal effects of chemical pollution but who despises the government and the "liberal elites," because for him, the EPA means some ignorant guy who tells him he can't fish, but does nothing about the chemical plants. These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are led to believe that Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates the opposite -- posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance desperately needed changes. Exit polls reveal that the passionate support for Trump was inspired primarily by the belief that he represented change, while Clinton was perceived as the candidate who would perpetuate their distress. The "change" that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it is understandable that the consequences are not clear to isolated people in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations (like unions) that can educate and organize. That is a crucial difference between today's despair and the generally hopeful attitudes of many working people under much greater economic duress during the Great Depression of the 1930s. There are other factors in Trump's success. Comparative studies show that doctrines of white supremacy have had an even more powerful grip on American culture than in South Africa, and it's no secret that the white population is declining. In a decade or two, whites are projected to be a minority of the work force, and not too much later, a minority of the population. The traditional conservative culture is also perceived as under attack by the successes of identity politics, regarded as the province of elites who have only contempt for the ''hard-working, patriotic, church-going [white] Americans with real family values'' who see their familiar country as disappearing before their eyes. One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies. The Democratic Party abandoned any real concern for working people by the 1970s, and they have therefore been drawn to the ranks of their bitter class enemies, who at least pretend to speak their language -- Reagan's folksy style of making little jokes while eating jelly beans, George W. Bush's carefully cultivated image of a regular guy you could meet in a bar who loved to cut brush on the ranch in 100-degree heat and his probably faked mispronunciations (it's unlikely that he talked like that at Yale), and now Trump, who gives voice to people with legitimate grievances -- people who have lost not just jobs, but also a sense of personal self-worth -- and who rails against the government that they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason). One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs that the corporate sector designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate/investor rights agreements that are uniformly mis-described as "free trade agreements" in the media and commentary. With all its flaws, the government is, to some extent, under popular influence and control, unlike the corporate sector. It is highly advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed government bureaucrats and to drive out of people's minds the subversive idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a government of, by and for the people. Is Trump representing a new movement in American politics, or was the outcome of this election primarily a rejection of Hillary Clinton by voters who hate the Clintons and are fed-up with "politics as usual?" It's by no means new. Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today's New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called "moderate Republicans." The "political revolution" that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower. The Republicans have moved so far toward a dedication to the wealthy and the corporate sector that they cannot hope to get votes on their actual programs, and have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization designed to set working people around the world in competition with one another while protecting the privileged and undermining the legal and other measures that provided working people with some protection, and with ways to influence decision-making in the closely linked public and private sectors, notably with effective labor unions. The consequences have been evident in recent Republican primaries. Every candidate that has emerged from the base -- such as [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain or [Rick] Santorum -- has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen. Deservedly or not, Clinton represented the policies that were feared and hated, while Trump was seen as the symbol of "change" -- change of what kind requires a careful look at his actual proposals, something largely missing in what reached the public. The campaign itself was remarkable in its avoidance of issues, and media commentary generally complied, keeping to the concept that true "objectivity" means reporting accurately what is "within the beltway," but not venturing beyond. Trump said following the outcome of the election that he "will represent all Americans." How is he going to do that when the nation is so divided and he has already expressed deep hatred for many groups in the United States, including women and minorities? Do you see any resemblance between Brexit and Donald Trump's victory? There are definite similarities to Brexit, and also to the rise of the ultranationalist far-right parties in Europe -- whose leaders were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory , perceiving him as one of their own: [Nigel] Farage, [Marine] Le Pen, [Viktor] Orban and others like them. And these developments are quite frightening. A look at the polls in Austria and Germany -- Austria and Germany -- cannot fail to evoke unpleasant memories for those familiar with the 1930s, even more so for those who watched directly, as I did as a child. I can still recall listening to Hitler's speeches, not understanding the words, though the tone and audience reaction were chilling enough. The first article that I remember writing was in February 1939, after the fall of Barcelona, on the seemingly inexorable spread of the fascist plague. And by strange coincidence, it was from Barcelona that my wife and I watched the results of the 2016 US presidential election unfold. As to how Trump will handle what he has brought forth -- not created, but brought forth -- we cannot say. Perhaps his most striking characteristic is unpredictability. A lot will depend on the reactions of those appalled by his performance and the visions he has projected, such as they are. Trump has no identifiable political ideology guiding his stance on economic, social and political issues, yet there are clear authoritarian tendencies in his behavior. Therefore, do you find any validity behind the claims that Trump may represent the emergence of "fascism with a friendly face?" in the United States? For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called "friendly fascism" in a perceptive study 35 years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed. With the Republicans in the White House, but also controlling both houses and the future shape of the Supreme Court, what will the US look like for at least the next four years? A good deal depends on his appointments and circle of advisers. Early indications are unattractive, to put it mildly. The Supreme Court will be in the hands of reactionaries for many years, with predictable consequences. If Trump follows through on his Paul Ryan-style fiscal programs, there will be huge benefits for the very rich -- estimated by the Tax Policy Center as a tax cut of over 14 percent for the top 0.1 percent and a substantial cut more generally at the upper end of the income scale, but with virtually no tax relief for others, who will also face major new burdens. The respected economics correspondent of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, writes that, "The tax proposals would shower huge benefits on already rich Americans such as Mr Trump," while leaving others in the lurch, including, of course, his constituency. The immediate reaction of the business world reveals that Big Pharma, Wall Street, the military industry, energy industries and other such wonderful institutions expect a very bright future. One positive development might be the infrastructure program that Trump has promised while (along with much reporting and commentary) concealing the fact that it is essentially the Obama stimulus program that would have been of great benefit to the economy and to the society generally, but was killed by the Republican Congress on the pretext that it would explode the deficit. While that charge was spurious at the time, given the very low interest rates, it holds in spades for Trump's program, now accompanied by radical tax cuts for the rich and corporate sector and increased Pentagon spending. There is, however, an escape, provided by Dick Cheney when he explained to Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" -- meaning deficits that we Republicans create in order to gain popular support, leaving it to someone else, preferably Democrats, to somehow clean up the mess. The technique might work, for a while at least. There are also many questions about foreign policy consequences, mostly unanswered. There is mutual admiration between Trump and Putin. How likely is it therefore that we may see a new era in US-Russia relations? One hopeful prospect is that there might be reduction of the very dangerous and mounting tensions at the Russian border: note "the Russian border," not the Mexican border. Thereby lies a tale that we cannot go into here. It is also possible that Europe might distance itself from Trump's America, as already suggested by [German] Chancellor [Angela] Merkel and other European leaders -- and from the British voice of American power, after Brexit. That might possibly lead to European efforts to defuse the tensions, and perhaps even efforts to move towards something like Mikhail Gorbachev's vision of an integrated Eurasian security system without military alliances, rejected by the US in favor of NATO expansion, a vision revived recently by Putin, whether seriously or not, we do not know, since the gesture was dismissed. Is US foreign policy under a Trump administration likely to be more or less militaristic than what we have seen under the Obama administration, or even the George W. Bush administration? I don't think one can answer with any confidence. Trump is too unpredictable. There are too many open questions. What we can say is that popular mobilization and activism, properly organized and conducted, can make a large difference. And we should bear in mind that the stakes are very large. Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with . | 0 |
The U. S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine merchant vessel at approximately 2:30 a. m. local time on Friday, while operating about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan. [According to the U. S. Navy’s 7th Fleet, the USS Fitzgerald collided with the merchant vessel ACX Crystal, a cargo ship. At least one sailor is injured, according to 7th Fleet. Seven others are unaccounted for, according to a Japanese broadcaster NHK news network. The Japanese Coast Guard assisted in conducting a medical evacuation, or medevac, for the injured sailor. There are no reports yet of casualties, and the extent of all personnel injuries is still being determined, the Navy said. Japanese Coast Guard cutters IZUNAMI and KANO are on station, as well as a helicopter, reports the Navy. Here is the ACX Crystal, the cargo vessel that collided with #USSFitzgerald. ~30, 000 tons. Could really do some damage. pic. twitter. — Lyle Morris (@LyleJMorris) June 16, 2017, The Fitzgerald, a guided missile destroyer that carries about 330 sailors, suffered damage on her starboard — or right side — above and below the waterline, resulting in flooding in some places. According to the Navy Times, the crew is fighting to save the ship. The commanding officer was incapacitated in the accident and the executive officer is in command, the Times reported. Initial reports suggested Auxiliary Machine Room 1 and two crew berthings were completely flooded, according to the outlet. The Navy said the full extent of damage is still being determined. Aerial footage of the badly damaged USS Fitzgerald pic. twitter. — Strategic Sentinel (@StratSentinel) June 16, 2017, The Navy said the Fitzgerald is currently proceeding back to Yokosuka at 3 knots under her own power, although with limited propulsion. Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka, a U. S. Navy base, is sending tugs to assist, the Navy said. The USS Dewey, another destroyer, as well as medical assistance, have also been dispatched. “Naval aircraft are also being readied,” it said. | 1 |
There can be days in this presidential campaign, if not weeks or months or maybe the entire thing, where you find yourself completely lost in dueling or blurry realities. It’s easy to get caught up in whatever is dominating a given moment. Everything gets so big and loud, and the candidates — famous to begin with — cease to even exist as human beings in front of you. Early this month, I went to Toledo, Ohio, to meet with Hillary Clinton, to sit down with her for a while and take the measure of her ordeal. It was five weeks before an unnervingly Election Day. Every campaign produces candidates declaring that “the most important election of our lifetimes” is at hand. Usually this is true only for the person running (no doubt 2012 was the most important election of Mitt Romney’s lifetime). But this year’s stakes feel legitimate. This is not only for the milestone that Clinton’s election would achieve, and all the cultural Rorschach tests, gender dynamics and political scar tissue embedded within. It’s because of Donald Trump, an astonishing figure unlike any who has ever come close to assuming power in this country. “Near existential” is how Tim Kaine recently described this campaign, and it did not come off as complete hyperbole. Clinton had a rally scheduled in a section of Toledo, the northwest Ohio city that ranked as the economically distressed of the nation’s 100 largest. It is home to many of the struggling white men who have made Ohio such tough terrain for Clinton and surprisingly fertile for her billionaire opponent. Clinton has trailed consistently in polls here, even though Barack Obama carried Ohio twice. I drove through town, passing block after block checkered with Trump signs, listening to screed after screed on talk radio about the malevolence of Obama and Clinton, and it sent me into one of those vortexes where I began to wonder if any Ohioans would be voting for Clinton at all. At the same time, we were in the midst of a stretch in which journalists and political “professionals” had concluded that Trump was in a death spiral. Since tanking in the first debate at Hofstra University a week earlier, the blustering mogul had endured — or rather perpetuated — a series of that included a Twitter assault on a Latina beauty queen (one of those things you never thought you’d write during a presidential campaign, and yet it barely registers a blink) a few pages of his 1995 tax return finding its way to The New York Times and the ensuing revelation that Trump had declared a $916 million loss, which could have enabled him to avoid paying 18 years’ worth of federal taxes. By the time this article went to press, Trump was facing a blizzard of new revulsion over a 2005 video obtained by The Washington Post in which the candidate is heard making lewd and lecherous claims about his treatment of women to the television host Billy Bush. Scores of Republicans withdrew their support, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said he was finished defending Trump and would instead focus on House and Senate races. The G. O. P. seemed as close to the brink of an civil war as any major party has been in decades, especially this close to an election. Trump had plummeted in polls nationwide and in battleground states in the days after the first debate at Hofstra, with the exception of Ohio, where a poll published on the day of the Toledo rally by Quinnipiac University showed Trump leading Clinton by five points — the only state to show Trump gaining . After Clinton’s event at an old train station, I was escorted up to an office where she was finishing an interview for “Good Luck America,” a political news show on Snapchat. The waiting area was arrayed with cushioned chairs, tables and reception desks. It felt like a doctor’s office. I took a seat next to Dan Schwerin, Clinton’s speechwriter, and Brian Fallon, the campaign’s national spokesman. Aides kept shuttling in and out of the conference room that housed “H. R. C. ,” a longstanding shorthand for the candidate in memos that over time has graduated to a spoken identifier (“What does H. R. C. think? ”). As had been the case since the first debate, the mood in the Clinton orbit was buoyant. Fallon mentioned that he wished the bad Trump stories could be spread out a little bit, allowing voters to hold and fully savor each in turn, rather than being them day after day. After a few minutes, another press aide, Nick Merrill, popped his head out of the conference room, in my direction and said the doctor would see me now. I had not talked to Clinton in person for more than a year. She was warm and animated, but her eyes hung heavy, and she appeared somewhat worn down, no doubt still feeling some lingering aftereffects of pneumonia. In the same way that presidents seem to age eight years for every four they spend in the White House, you can see the toll this campaign has taken — the surprising challenge of Bernie Sanders, the email story and F. B. I. investigation and Trump’s pelting. She sat down next to me at a conference table, slumped back in a swiveling desk chair. Her contempt for Trump was clear from the outset, far more intense than it appears even in speeches and debates. It went well beyond the competitive fervor with which one candidate tends to speak about another. “It does feel much different,” she said. “If I were running against another Republican, we’d have our disagreements, don’t get me wrong, and I would be trying to make my case vigorously. But I wouldn’t go to bed at night with a knot in the pit of my stomach. ” She enunciated her T’s (“knoT in the piT”) as if she were spitting out the words. “I had the opportunity to meet a lot of presidents over the years,” Clinton said. “I’ve had my disagreements with them. But I never doubted for a nanosecond that they got up every morning trying to figure out what was the best path forward for the country. ” At least, she added, “they were serious people. ” That sense of high moral purpose is evident throughout the campaign. Whenever I visited Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, the youthful energy and confidence of the staff was leavened by a detectably uneasy undercurrent. Either they are helping elect the first female president, assuring her place in history, or they will be the people who lost to Donald Trump. “There is a dread that people have about what it would actually mean if he were to actually be elected,” John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, told me. As much as Obama’s team and supporters wanted to see the president in 2012, Podesta said, “they didn’t feel that the country was going to fall into the abyss if Mitt Romney was president of the United States. ” Given that, I asked Clinton if Nov. 8 scared her. “No, not really,” she said slowly. I clarified that I was talking about the prospect of her losing. She knew what I was talking about. “I’m not going to lose,” she said. She shot me a knowing grin. This is the standard politician’s answer when asked to contemplate defeat — even candidates who are down 30 points — but Clinton seemed to mean it. “I don’t go there,” Clinton said. Trump is such an unnerving figure, partly because in getting this far he has already defied so many predictions, largely on the strength of his ability to command the media fun house. This has been the enduring, defining characteristic of the race. His mania for being seen and heard and mentioned has proved exceptionally well suited, maybe codependent, to the current age. To Trump, ubiquity is power and success, and at least until recently that equation held true. His ability during the Republican primaries to talk, tweet or insult his way into the middle of seemingly every news cycle reinforced the notion that he was simply bigger than the rest of those politicians. He believed that the extent of most people’s discernment was what they chose to fill their screens with — that it almost didn’t matter if it made them think the worst of him or, say, Mexicans. He barely bothered with policy papers or major “issue” speeches or discussions. Cable would never have covered that anyway, certainly not live. People would grow bored. He was always talking about how boring Clinton was, especially her substantive debates against Sanders. For Trump, boring is the worst. It is disgusting. It is the . Trump coined a grand and nostalgic slogan, “Make America Great Again,” easily the most recognizable campaign calling card since “Yes We Can. ” When I talked to Clinton, she told me how pleased she was with her own slogan, “Stronger Together. ” She was especially proud of how it came out of a deliberative process: grinding out ideas and really figuring out what it was she wanted to stand for. I mentioned that it hardly rolls off the tongue, sounding more like a CrossFit slogan than a rallying cry. “It’s clunky, but it works,” I said, and she nodded. “It works,” she said with a hint of defensiveness, “in part because I really believe it, O. K.? How do we get people to overcome these barriers?” Clinton has worked closely with (and married) some of the most gifted orators and “explainers” of recent political memory — Obama, Joe Biden and Bill. All three are deft at relaying big themes and small narratives alike. Clinton, for her part, is stubbornly cautious and on script, banking on the notion that concerns of voters and tangible benefits of her proposals will win out in the end over spectacle. “At the end of the day, people are going to vote on Nov. 8,” she told me. “And like it or not, issues will actually be part of governing. ” Her approach doesn’t make for the best TV, but her years in public life have made her wary of any exposure, especially when she does not control it. Scrutiny is dangerous, and disclosure is rarely rewarded. If Trump views the media as a vehicle to express his id, Clinton is all superego. She has been happy to leave that field to him, even if it makes her boring, or even ignored. The Clintons have fully inhabited the revolutions of the last four decades. Bill Clinton’s campaigns for governor of Arkansas were relatively simple, and stable productions, conducted via traditional television, news radio and print outlets. But from the moment the Clintons went national in the early 1990s, their ambitions have met with a series of transformative new media adversaries. His presidency was the first to suffer a sustained assault from conservative talk radio, particularly in its first term, when Rush Limbaugh was establishing himself as the most influential radio host of his generation. The Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s subsequent impeachment were driven heavily by revelations on a new website, the Drudge Report, and covered exhaustively by the emerging force that cable news was becoming. Hillary Clinton’s first presidential run in 2008 was badly outmaneuvered by Obama’s campaign in the race to master the internet as an organizing, outreach and tool. Her current enterprise has been deft in using tools as a way of reaching supporters, disseminating opposition research and occasionally engaging with Trump. But for the most part, the dizzying new level of scrutiny and saturation made possible by the digital age only made Clinton retreat further into caution. When I spoke to her over the Fourth of July weekend in 2015 in New Hampshire, Clinton had clearly been thinking about the impact of new technology on human development and how people communicate. We were talking about mental health and substance abuse, two issues that a lot of voters in New Hampshire were raising with her. She described a meeting with a group that had developed online programs. One woman predicted to her that a big challenge in mental health over the coming years would be “how to undo the damage that the internet has caused young people. ” It’s striking to me now that Clinton’s main interest in these new media technologies was not so much as a political tool but as a policy concern for the citizenry. Clinton described “the insidious, pernicious comparisons” that online communities can foster in young people, and the temptation to “put out an identity online before it’s ever formed” in real life. Thinking about this exchange 14 months later, after what feels like a generation’s worth of lines crossed and taboos shattered, her concern seems strangely prescient. Trump, of course, both shares and feeds his audience’s addiction to stimuli and entertainment. Early in the campaign, during the Republican primaries, he would pretty much say yes to anyone who wanted to put him on TV or in a magazine. He was indefatigable in reaching out to reporters, lobbying for coverage. He can be undeniably fun and, to a point, seductive. My first encounter with Trump, more than a year ago, came in an unsolicited note that said simply, “Mark, It’s Time for a Cover!” Clinton, on the other hand, proceeds with immense caution. When we first spoke last July, she agreed to our meeting on the maddening proposition that we do it off the record. I went along, reluctantly, as it was my only entree (she agreed later to put parts of it on the record). Her hesitancy to give interviews and allow media access has barely subsided over time. When I asked Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, how his candidate had adapted to the insane rules of engagement that this campaign has “normalized” (to use a 2016 buzzword) he essentially said that she hadn’t. “Hillary approaches this campaign through the portal of wanting to fix problems,” Mook told me. “And so politics for her is, first and foremost, not an exercise in communicating to the masses. It’s about finding the right solution and then going after it. ” Clinton is, in other words, the . She is not a political novelty, nor is she especially entertaining as a media personality or in front of big groups. She and her campaign know this and have been smart about not pretending otherwise. Trump’s big shadow and outrage machine have even allowed her to become slightly and perhaps blissfully lost to fade, if not into obscurity, at least into a background that cuts the glare of the scrutiny to which she has been so averse. In a sense, she is daring voters to study her positions, listen to her answers and not look to her for entertainment or emotional impact. In 2016, that can seem almost risky. “I’ve laid out all of these policies, and look, people kind of made fun of it, because ‘Oh, there she goes with another policy,’’u2009” Clinton told me. “I’m trying to run a campaign that presents an alternative case. ” It’s telling that a candidate with the name recognition, résumé and baggage of Hillary Clinton is nonetheless left to present her campaign as an “alternative case. ” “My husband and I laugh sometimes about the ‘Antiques Roadshow,’’u2009” Clinton told me, referring to the PBS show about antique appraisers that she watches devoutly. “Sometimes we feel like we are the antiques on a roadshow when it comes to politics. ” I started traveling with the Clinton campaign this Labor Day, supposedly the “unofficial kickoff to the general election. ” In every election season, political geniuses are always identifying seemingly random events, like some cattle call in Iowa, and declaring them to be “unofficial kickoffs. ” But Labor Day had the genuine feel that a switch was being flipped inside the Clinton campaign. It was unveiling a new plane, a white and powder blue 737 that slightly resembled the old Pan Am jets. A “Stronger Together” slogan adorned the side, with a “H” logo painted across the tail. Consigned to the back was the traveling press. Like most corps, Clinton’s comprises an aggressive bunch of mostly reporters, camera people and network “embeds” charged with tracking everything remotely newsworthy that a candidate might do on a given day. They are descendants of the “Boys on the Bus” generation, whom Tim Crouse made famous in his unforgiving account of “pack journalism” as it existed during the 1972 presidential campaign. Today’s pack is distinct in fundamental ways: There are many more women and minorities in the group (as in, there are more than almost none) there is considerably less drinking, and no one smokes and while reporters 40 years ago paid their dues and scrapped like hell to cover a presidential campaign, many of today’s cast members are in their first journalism jobs. They are competitive but collegial. Their tech savviness is astounding (actually it made me scared). It’s easy to see why a enterprise like the Clinton campaign might be terrified of an army of smartphone dynamos who are just dying to tweet out what color cough drops the candidate was popping (Halls, yellow). By Sept. 5, Clinton had gone 275 consecutive days without holding a news conference. With the campaign now unofficially kicked off, it was time for her to tend to this pesky constituency. Shortly before the plane left Westchester County in New York for Cleveland, where she would be holding a Labor Day rally, Clinton made her way to the press section in the rear of the plane. Forty or so reporters maneuvered themselves over chairs, armrests and one another to capture this “casual” hello for posterity. “I was just waiting for this moment,” she said, deploying the kind of slightly nervous icebreaker you might use on a doctor before a colonoscopy. “I’m thrilled,” she continued. “No, really. I wanted to welcome you onto the plane. I think it’s pretty cool, don’t you?” When no one spoke up to answer, the candidate jumped in herself. “You’re supposed to say yes,” she said. The Labor Day rally took place in a mostly neighborhood of Cleveland, where Clinton was joined by her running mate, Tim Kaine. He spoke for a few minutes, and then Clinton came out to wish everyone a happy Labor Day. “We were trying to figure out where we could be,” Clinton said. “And we all said, ‘Let’s go to Cleveland! ’’u2009” It went downhill from there. Clinton unleashed a few coughs between sentences, which soon degenerated into a fit. Clinton tried to continue her speech, gamely if not wisely in hindsight, Kaine should have grabbed the mike for a few minutes while Clinton recovered. She popped lozenges and gulped water. In a different political climate, some pundit might identify the coughing fit as potentially “humanizing” or, at worst, “bad optics. ” But 2016 is not much for humanity. You could sense dread in the crowd — and see cringing eyes among the Clinton staff — over what would become of this moment. This is your brain on Trump. He had been suggesting for weeks that Clinton was not in good health, a conceit stoked by a Greek chorus on the internet and a few “medical experts” on cable (paging Dr. Giuliani). The coughing fit was all over TV that afternoon and inspired a screaming Drudge headline about Clinton’s “violent coughing fit. ” Clinton’s trachea cleared well enough for her to get through the Cleveland speech. What had become clear in this new phase of the race was that she would be devoting big parts of her events to ridiculing Trump more methodically than she had before. But Trump, though a rich target, is also a tricky foil. People inside the Clinton orbit mourn the familiar shirts and skins of going up against a more conventional Republican nominee. They dealt in familiar Republican themes and operated within certain boundaries. You hear a surprising amount of Romney nostalgia: Several Clinton aides I spoke to brought him up in almost wistful terms, as well as John McCain and George W. Bush. They are now fondly recalled as familiar predators in the political habitat, like the characters from that old cartoon “Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog. ” Ralph and Sam show up to work, punch the clock and greet each other amiably before starting their daily game — Ralph trying to corral sheep while Sam thwarts him. Each episode ends with the adversaries punching out their timecards and bidding farewell to each other until the next installment. It goes without saying that many people are supporting Trump because they’re tired of Ralph and Sam and all the same old cartoon animals. They’re ready for a bigger, badder wolf to deport all the sheep and then slap his name in gold on the side of the barn. They’re dying to watch that show. Back on Hill Force One, Clinton made another visit to the press cabin, this time for an official “gaggle” — or did it count as a news conference, which would officially end her drought? This set off a debate among the press corps and campaign, until eventually it was agreed upon that yes, this counted as a formal “availability” session with the press, or “avail,” as it is known in the bubble. Breaking news: drought over. Clinton revealed in the session that she had increased her intake of antihistamine. She spoke in greater depth about her allergies, which prompted a pointed question (“Madam Secretary, is it pollen? ”) a broader one about whether she was concerned about all the conspiracy theories (“There are so many, I’ve lost track”) and another about whether she thought these health rumors were sexist (“Hmm, interesting”). Whenever she is asked questions that touch on possible sexism and double standards, Clinton tends to assume a slow, sarcastic and vaguely disdainful voice. She declared the topic “interesting” she would “leave it to others” to determine. On whether she is being treated differently as a female candidate, Clinton suggested that it would be a great topic, in the future, for “a lot of Ph. D. theses and popular journalism writing. ” She then wrapped things up, disappeared behind her curtain and left us to our “popular journalism writing. ” The flight back to Westchester was marred by a incident. A few of the reporters in the back started engaging in an old traveling high jinks of rolling an orange up the aisle in an attempt to reach the candidate’s seat. The tradition dates at least to the Reagan years, and supposedly counted Nancy as a fan. In some iterations, the reporters would write out a question on the orange that the candidate might reward with an answer. This particular evening, the appointed citrus was a clementine, and a young TV embed scrawled out the question: Would Clinton rather have dinner with Trump or Vladimir Putin? After a few failed rolls, the fruit suffered a violent collision with a seat leg that resulted in a citrus explosion all over my laptop. Finally, one reporter successfully propelled the clementine into the candidate’s sanctum up front. A few minutes later, it came back with “Putin” circled. Juicy. Next stop, Twitter: “Clinton Prefers Putin as Dining Partner to Trump. ” But wait a minute. The Clinton people thought this clementine bowling was off the record. Citrus is classified! An argument ensued. Varun Anand, an affable young campaign aide assigned to “wrangle” the traveling press corps, looked stricken. He engaged in a somewhat plaintive discussion behind me with Monica Alba, a campaign reporter for NBC (“Varun, you have no case,” she said). Anand then summoned some muscle in the person of the more senior press babysitter, Nick Merrill, who strolled back unto the breach. “O. K. so I was back here a few minutes ago, and everyone was laughing and throwing an orange around,” Merrill said, assessing the situation. “And now I come back again, and suddenly everyone is really tense. ” Correct. In any case, Merrill clarified that the clementine had not actually reached Clinton, but rather he picked it up first and read the question aloud. To which Clinton remarked that she had once eaten dinner with Putin. Merrill then circled “Putin” and rolled back the clementine. Everyone tweeted out Merrill’s clarification. The tension lifted Merrill headed back to the front cabin and, as he passed my seat, said, “I can’t wait to read four paragraphs of this stupidity in your magazine story. ” Clinton recently told a rally crowd in North Carolina that her many years in politics had taken a toll on her. “I’ve built up some defenses,” she said, in a line that was, for her, . “When it comes to public service,” she said, “I’m better at the service part than the public part. ” Clinton has thought a great deal about the isolation that public life can foster. This can even be exacerbated by new technology tools — like smartphones — that can theoretically nurture connections but can also depersonalize encounters between citizens and public figures. Outside her plane after a speech in Tampa, Fla. a few days earlier, Clinton stopped for a few minutes under a wing to chat and take pictures with the photographers in her press entourage. This produced a classic scene: Clinton posing for pictures with the photographers who normally photograph her, while the rest of her media contingent stood along the stairs photographing her posing for photos with her photographers. In her conversation with the photographers, Clinton talked about how the phenomenon of “selfies” has transformed her encounters with voters. She was always adept at drawing quick connections with people she met on rope lines. Even in the briefest of exchanges, they would tell her their stories. I had observed Clinton in many rope lines over the years, and I can attest that she’s effective in those settings, though not at the level of her demon of a husband. I watched her during the Democratic primaries in 2008 as she greeted a crowd of voters in Charleston, W. Va. One woman described to Clinton a litany of her life’s struggles in the space of a few seconds (her husband’s diabetes, their lack of health insurance) the candidate nodded through squinted eyes, signed an autograph on a napkin and hugged the woman, who walked away in tears. “I got a lot out of these short meetings, holding somebody’s hand, having somebody tell me about their problems, addiction, losing a job,” Clinton told me when I spoke to her in Toledo. “I thought of it like an ongoing educational experience. ” She misses that, she said, because now such encounters are driven by one goal: the selfie. “It’s a loss,” Clinton said. She understands why people want selfies. “It makes my time at the event with them real. Put it on Facebook, and show it to everyone who follows them on Instagram, everyone they can reach. ” She prefers the handwritten notes she used to get a lot more of, everything from little scraps of paper to stacks of . They all bore the script of individual Americans wanting to tell her about their lives. Clinton told me a story from when Chelsea was 5. She heard her parents discussing Reagan’s visit in May 1985 to a German military cemetery at Bitburg, the final resting home of many Nazi soldiers. Chelsea, whose favorite movie then was “The Sound of Music,” asked for her mother’s help in writing a letter to the White House. “Dear President Reagan,” it began. “I’ve seen ‘The Sound of Music.’ The Nazis are not nice people. Don’t go to their cemetery. ” Reagan went to Bitburg Chelsea received no response. After Bill Clinton was elected, his wife vowed that every letter sent to the White House, especially from a child, would receive a response. I have no idea how well they actually executed on this, but Clinton was making a bigger point here, about the importance of connection and the sharing of stories in a political world overrun by snapshots, caricatures, fragmentation and reality distortion. “This sounds a little extreme to say, but it’s like an evolutionary development, right?” Clinton told me. Your communities should begin small, she said, in terms that precisely echoed those set out in her 1996 book, “It Takes a Village. ” You form identities in your family, she said, and then in your neighborhood and in wider communities. “It was all person to person, and you learned to deal with people, for better or worse,” she said. She contrasted this with modern cultures. People use the terms “friends” and “followers” to describe people they have never met, whose identities they think they know but may not even be real. “And you are having emotional and intellectual experiences,” Clinton said, “that are unlike anything that’s ever happened in the entirety of human history. ” Like the culture it is playing out in, this presidential campaign has existed in a racing progression of flash images and snap judgments. Personal narratives get lost, while a candidate’s can become warped through the vertigo. We might be as interconnected as ever but starved for connections, Clinton says. Trump, perhaps tellingly, is not much for hearing voters’ stories. He rarely does retail stops and hates shaking hands. He tweets at all hours and constantly watches himself on television. He is in so many ways the . At the end of our conversation in Toledo, I asked Clinton if she thought the resentment sowed and fissures exposed in the course of this campaign would make the United States an even harder country to govern. “No, we face some hard choices,” she began, and I immediately smirked — “Hard Choices” was the title of her 2014 memoir on her years as secretary of state, and I figured she was clicking into huckster and mode. But then she veered in a direction that surprised me. “There are some difficult trends, which are not primarily political,” Clinton told me. “They are more cultural, psychological, and we just have to deal with them. ” Earlier she had mentioned the 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” by Neil Postman, about how television has oriented politics more and more toward entertainment. She also cited the historian Christopher Lasch, the author of “The Culture of Narcissism. ” The authors, she said, “were trying to come to grips, before the internet, trying to understand what was happening in our society, that we are experiencing a level of alienation, disconnectedness. ” She told me that her primary objective as president would be to encourage connectedness, to have actual conversations. Clinton has always preferred to build narratives from a granular level: start with details and allow a message to emerge more slowly. In college in the late 1960s, she resisted revolutionary change in favor of grinding out incremental progress inside the system. She has no patience for messianic rhetoric and hyperbolic slogans and grandiose speeches. It can make her an awkward fit in this campaign environment, harder to break through and determinedly not dazzling. But Clinton said that the key to building connectedness lies in a leader’s ability to knit together a sense of common destiny from the ground up. “It requires real storytelling,” she said. “And I think as president, I can tell that story. It’s harder as a candidate. ” I had often heard the exact opposite. In Obama’s first term, his aides lamented that it was much easier to tell stories and drive a message in a campaign context than from the White House. As president, they said, you are constantly reacting to things and largely at the mercy of events — “governing in prose,” as opposed to “campaigning in poetry,” to adapt the old line from Mario Cuomo. Clinton envisions a model more suited to her skills and comforts. It also could portend a very different style of president — without the sweeping themes of Barack Obama, the moral certainty of George W. Bush or the explanatory clarity of Bill Clinton. Can Hillary Clinton do a better job inspiring people from the White House than she has from the campaign stage? Would it become easier or harder to do without Trump around to embody everything she has ever opposed and scare the daylights out of her base? “Don’t blow this” is what Clinton hears most often these days, she told me, or variations thereof. As it has turned out, Clinton, who began her campaign intent on breaking the last barrier — the glass ceiling — has found her most compelling rationale in her own role as a barrier, a bulwark against the impossible alternative. As I was leaving our interview, she smiled, looked me in the eyes and left me with a casual reminder. “As I’ve told people,” she said, “I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse. ” | 1 |
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